


A Lesser Montague

by Onmyliteraturebullshitagain



Category: Romeo And Juliet - All Media Types, Romeo And Juliet - Shakespeare
Genre: Benvolio loves Mercutio, Benvolio takes charge, Bisexual Character, Canon consistent dumbasses, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Language, F/M, Fix-It, Implied Sexual Content, It just takes him a bit to realize, M/M, Mercutio loves Benvolio, Mercutio still gets stabbed, Mild Sexual Content, Modern Era, Modern Retelling, Modern language, Pansexual Character, Pretty mild though, Resolved Sexual Tension, Romeo and Juliet References, Romeo and Juliet if it focused on Benvolio, Romeo is sort of terrible, Sexual Tension, Sexuality open to interpretations, Still Verona but Americanized heavily, Tybalt still dies, disasters in love, everyone else lives, everyone is a disaster
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:13:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 33,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24411874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Onmyliteraturebullshitagain/pseuds/Onmyliteraturebullshitagain
Summary: In the original play of "Romeo and Juliet", Benvolio Montague appears up until Mercutio's death in Act 3 and then disappears. But what if that wasn't the case? What if, in an alternate and modernized version of the story, Benvolio decided that Mercutio was not going to die and no one else was either?Benvolio, who sees himself in the shadow of his more dramatic cousin and flamboyant best friend, finds himself propelled into unfolding events that will make him decide just how much he'll fight for love, family, and a peaceful Verona.
Relationships: Juliet Capulet/Romeo Montague, Mercutio & Benvolio Montague & Romeo Montague, Mercutio/Benvolio Montague
Comments: 32
Kudos: 55





	A Lesser Montague

**Author's Note:**

> This story and these characters are in no way related to the "same" characters/events in "The Plays the Thing," just in case there was any confusion. This is its own self-contained retelling that draws from characterization and dialogue from within the original "Romeo and Juliet."

Chapter 1

It was the time of the year when the trees were frosted with blossoms, and, as regular as the seasons, Benvolio was dealing with a Romeo who was in love.

“Well, who is it this time?” he asked, walking steadily beside his cousin and trying to keep his voice from sounding as long-suffering, and annoyed, and exasperating as he actually felt inside. It wouldn’t help anyone for Romeo to push him away too like he did everyone else when he got like this.

Romeo, for his part, looked like he hadn’t slept at all the night before, his eyes bloodshot with crying and bruised with exhaustion, his head slumped forward as he walked. He walked hunched, his collar pulled up around his cheeks and his hands tucked into the pockets of his too-warm-for-the-season jacket. Benvolio, his hands in his own pockets, simply waited and watched Romeo's sorrowful face. Really, he probably didn’t even notice Benvolio, irritated voice or not, and just sighed again instead.

“A woman…” Romeo said finally, like the word was some sort of benediction.

Benvolio resisted the urge to roll his eyes and instead just looked up at the morning sky. “Yeah, I guessed that part, bud.”

“Sharp-shooter, you,” Romeo said with an exaggerated sigh. “I’m in love with a beautiful woman.”

“Of course,” Benvolio replied, looking up at the flowering trees as he passed so he wouldn't make a face at Romeo. "It wouldn't be like you to go after an _ugly_ woman, would it?"

Romeo grunted something that was almost a laugh, which meant he was coming around a little. There was a reason the Montague patriarch sent Benvolio out when Romeo was being this way, or being any way, really. 

Sometimes Benvolio felt like his family had saddled him with one purpose as soon as they’d named him. Benvolio, from the Italian for _good-will, well-wisher, peacemaker._ “Look after your cousin, Benvolio… try to help Romeo, Benvolio… make sure there isn’t trouble, Benvolio…” He didn’t know anymore if his personality actually was to be a peacemaker or if he’d just been so trained to it now that he couldn’t imagine another way.

Romeo was talking again, and Benvolio realized with a pinch of guilt that he should probably be paying attention.

“--won’t listen to me, won’t let me send her gifts, won’t even let me look at her, just seals herself off behind her walls of chastity,” he was saying like he was acting on a stage, like he’d make the invisible audience sigh and swoon at his troubles.

It was a familiar enough refrain Benvolio could have sang it right along with Romeo by now. Romeo really would have made a hell of an actor if he’d applied himself to it, and if his parents wouldn’t have had strokes at the very thought. He certainly had the personality and melodrama and looks for it.

“You want my advice?” Benvolio asked when Romeo had once more trailed off with a belabored sigh.

“If it will rescue me from this living death, then yes,” Romeo replied, and Benvolio couldn’t stifle the bark of laughter at that.

Romeo side-eyed him at the noise but did manage a bit of a smile. He and Benvolio had been friends since they’d been children, thrown together because they were the closest in age of the younger Montagues, most of their siblings and cousins off and married and having their own children. Benvolio was a little older, which helped with his role of "keep Romeo from killing himself," but they were genuine friends regardless. Growing up, they'd shared enough in common to bond quickly: a love of adventure stories and rough-housing outside and making up jokes about the older, stuffy Montagues. But then Romeo had discovered girls and fallen ass over teakettle for anything with long eyelashes and a haughty disposition. Of course, Benvolio knew he was styling himself as some kind of Arthurian lover, the noble knight pining after his unreachable lady and striving to prove his worth and goodness to her, but Benvolio just found it irritating. 

Benvolio, for his part, liked girls just fine. He liked dancing with them, and he liked the flowery way they always smelled, and sure, he liked the glimpse of some nice curves when given the opportunity. He'd gone on dates, had girlfriends, felt those sorts of feelings bubble up inside him. But within reason. His ass was staying firmly where it belonged, and his teakettle was staying on its tray.

“Just… forget about her for a while--stop thinking about her,” Benvolio advised after a moment, because it had worked well enough for him in the past. 

Romeo just laughed.

“How, exactly, am I supposed to not think?” he replied, shaking his head at his cousin.

“Well, come on,” Benvolio said as they wandered into the city square, which was starting to filter with people as the day warmed. “Look around you.” He gave a wide gesture, encompassing the flower sellers and the women perusing the shops, the swish of skirts and the click of heels. “There’re pretty girls everywhere, not just that one in the whole world!”

Romeo groaned. “But none of them are as beautiful as _her._ No one is, anywhere, and all _these_ women make me think about is how much prettier _Rosalind_ is…”

Benvolio shook his head. “Seriously, Romeo?" He wrapped an arm around his cousin’s shoulders, pulling him in close as they walked. “Who was it a couple weeks ago? Olivia? Then before that was… Charlotte, right?”

Romeo shoved at his side, but didn’t shift out from under his taller cousin’s protective arm. “Yeah, yeah, but still… Rosalind’s different. She’s special…” 

He was sounding slightly less sure this time, though, which meant Benvolio was winning out, even against Romeo’s pig-headed obsession with love.

“I’m gonna find a way to cheer you up.” He nudged Romeo and grinned. “I promise. We'll have some fun and get you over her in no time.”

Romeo eyed him. “This is gonna involve Mercutio, isn’t it?”

Benvolio actually laughed at that, continuing to lead Romeo along. “Yeah, probably.”

As the pair walked, Benvolio kept a somewhat wary eye on the people who noted them. They both were pretty visibly Montagues: the same dark hair, dark eyes, general face shape. But in Romeo's case, he'd been gifted a face carved out by a sculptor: strong cheekbones, wide mouth, a strong jaw, a perfect, regular symmetry that was immediately attractive and recognizable as the favorite son of the house of Montague. Benvolio shared some of this resemblance but the sculptor had skipped over him. All of his features were softened, given to roundness, flatness, ubiquity. Montague, certainly, but some lesser off-shoot. And puberty had only made the distinctions clearer: Romeo remained a bit shorter but got broader across the shoulders, well-proportioned from torso to legs. On the other hand, Benvolio had simply gotten tall. If he'd been a girl, he might have been politely called _willowy,_ but as a boy, the best he got was _thin, lanky, gangly_. The older they got, the stranger a pair of cousins they ended up making.

As if he knew somewhat what he was thinking, Romeo shrugged out from under Benvolio’s grip and pulled his collars back up to his face. 

Benvolio allowed himself a quiet sigh. He ought to be keeping an eye out for Capulets, rather than brooding about being a Montague, but it was difficult to break a habit of a lifetime of comparison.

Still, there seemed to be no Capulets, and he decided to focus on that good luck instead. That, and the promise of Mercutio, who for some reason was good at making him forget he was a lesser son of the Montagues. Maybe it was just because someone related to the prince probably shouldn't have paid Benvolio any mind at all, but for some reason, Mercutio chose to. Continually. With or without Romeo's presence.

The thought warmed him a little as he turned his still-woe-begotten cousin down the next street and kept their pairs of feet moving.

Chapter 2: 

Mercutio was the only one who called him "Ben," but Mercutio was the only one who did a lot of things, most of which would never have been acceptable from someone else. It was something about the exact way Mercutio blended extravagance, sexual deviance, humor, and mockery that made him charismatic and likeable, rather than the asshole he probably should have been. No one really escaped the barb of Mercutio's wit, but, for some reason, no one really wanted to.

“There’re my boys!” Mercutio exclaimed, dressed in some gaudily bright-colored designer coat, his sandy hair in a perfectly disheveled pompadour. 

He threw an arm around Benvolio’s waist, pulling him into his side with a tug. Benvolio chuckled and accepted the intimacy, which he definitely would have bristled at if it’d come from anyone else. He wasn't a toucher, a cuddler, any of those things. It came with the territory of staying out of the throws of love and away from the drama his friends attracted.

Mercutio set in on Romeo as soon as he caught sight of his pathetic expression, which gave Benvolio a break from trying to convince him to let Rosalind go. Of course, Benvolio's advice had leaned more toward the "leave girls alone for a while," while Mercutio's pushed more toward "find yourself an easier girl and just get off." As Benvolio watched the two interact, he mentally shrugged. Either option would probably get them to the same result.

“Oh, I’ve got the best plan to solve this little problem,” Mercutio proclaimed, sending a wink in Benvolio’s direction where he was still tucked into his side.

If Romeo was secretly meant to be an actor in an Arthurian romance, then Mercutio was meant to be an all around entertainer. Every bit of him, from his styled hair to the tips of his equally designer shoes, screamed for attention.

Benvolio wasn't sure where he fit into their equation except maybe as the audience. Better yet, the straight man for them to play against. Every good comedian needed one to make themselves look better, the person who nodded and followed and helped cue the viewer when to laugh. He mentally kicked the thought away.

“This very night,” Mercutio continued, using his free hand to make a sweeping gesture, “there's a party that’s sure to be quite the sampling of beautiful people.” He raised a suggestive eyebrow.

Benvolio cocked his head toward Romeo. “See, that’d be a great place to meet some new girls!”

“Or get some new girls on his meat,” Mercutio replied in his salacious voice, which just made Benvolio laugh again.

"Where's this party then?" Romeo asked, not hiding his interest very well.

"The Capulets," Mercutio declared.

Benvolio frowned. "Merc, seriously?"

"It'll be great!" Mercutio replied, completely undeterred.

Romeo shook his head, returning to dejected. “Yeah, we'll just waltz in there, as the Capulet’s sworn enemies--”

“ _I’m_ nobody’s sworn enemy,” Mercutio cut in, covering his heart as if offended. As if anything could offend Mercutio.

Romeo rolled his eyes. “Yeah, but Benvolio and I _are_."

Mercutio waved him off, completely unconcerned and unrepentant.

"It’s a stupid plan--right?” Romeo asked, gesturing at Benvolio, obviously looking for his voice-of-reason companion to chime in.

Unfortunately for Romeo, Benvolio was finding Mercutio's flippant reassurance convincing. It had been forever since they’d been to any sort of big party where they could actually dance and drink and meet new people, and he was personally more annoyed by the feud than invested in it. Why the hell should they carry on a feud that had started well before they were even born? Why should it matter to them? Why couldn’t they enjoy themselves and just ignore it?

Granted, even if he thought that, the Capulets certainly didn’t, and that did put a damper on his thoughts. He looked to Mercutio, who read his hesitation immediately.

“Did I mention it’s a masked ball?” Mercutio put in, shooting Benvolio another look. “We could be _anyone_ when we go.”

His lips tipped up suggestively, which Benvolio mostly just ignored, and instead looked over at Romeo’s still doubting face.

“I think it sounds fun, especially with masks to hide who we are,” Benvolio admitted, “and it’s not like anyone would expect us to give a speech about why we were there.” He shrugged. “Let everyone think whatever they want about who we are.”

Romeo’s eyes moved between the two of them, still looking baffled and unused to being the more cautious one. Mercutio waggled his eyebrows and Benvolio chuckled again, leaning a bit into Mercutio’s side (which was difficult with their differing heights but he managed). Romeo groaned and kicked a few pebbles on the ground.

“Fine,” he replied, “but I’m not gonna dance. I’ll just… supervise you two.”

“Oh, you’ll dance,” Mercutio said, letting Benvolio go and approaching the other Montague. 

He grabbed one of Romeo’s hands and forced him into a twirl, which just made Romeo groan again, but with less feeling this time. 

“Come on, boys,” Mercutio said, letting Romeo go again. “We’ve got masks to buy.”

They spent the day wandering around together, shopping for costume pieces and listening to Mercutio joke and flirt with anyone he got close to. He always circled back to the Montagues, though, especially Benvolio, who felt a bit like a sunflower turning to follow the movement of the sun. It was a dumb thought, and one he probably shouldn’t have been entertaining, but there was just something about when Mercutio turned those blue eyes and expressive lips in his direction. He immediately rotated after him, basked in whatever light was being pointed his way.

It had been like that between them as long as Benvolio could remember, the joking push and pull of their relationship, Benvolio daring to say and do things in Mercutio's presence that he wouldn't with anyone else. And Mercutio reciprocated with his jokes, his friendly touches, his consistency. He was chaotic and loud and impulsive, but Benvolio was used to that, basically trained for that. He could get along with anyone. His name was _goodwill_ after all.

Chapter 3 

The trio separated long enough for the Montagues to head back home and reassure Romeo’s parents that he was fine and taken care of and to change into something more appropriate to a party. Romeo's parents, luckily, didn't ask what they were doing, clearly trusting that if Benvolio was there, Romeo couldn't get into too much trouble. Benvolio didn't correct them.

Once they were dressed and styled and freed from the restraints of their families, the two Montagues set out again to meet up with Mercutio not too far from the Capulets' grand estate.

Romeo was withdrawing again as they got closer, once more looking dour and dragging his feet and generally moping. At least he was still walking forward, and Benvolio decided not to say anything about it.

“Don’t you two clean up nice,” Mercutio announced as they approached in their dress shirts and slacks with their mardi gras masks up on their forehead, waiting to be pulled down. 

While the Montagues had gone for pretty basic colors, Romeo in red and Benvolio black, Mercutio was wearing a suit all in bright blue with a patterned shirt underneath, his mask covered in feathers that made his head look a bit like a peacock. He immediately caught sight of Romeo’s expression again.

“Still so sad, little puppy?” he teased, mussing Romeo’s hair.

“I’m just not in the mood for dancing,” Romeo grunted, pulling away from Mercutio’s grip and smoothing down his hair again. “This is stupid.”

“Aw come on,” Mercutio said, taking a few quick dance steps himself. “It’ll do you good.”

“Easy for you to say,” Romeo responded bitterly. “You’re _you_ , never worried or sad a day in your damn life, and I’ve got a soul made of lead that drags me into the ground.”

Benvolio looked up at the darkening sky, sure God must be testing him today.

“My God you’re dramatic,” Mercutio replied, which was rich, coming from someone like him. “If love’s got you this down, then imagine if you ever had to deal with a _real_ problem in your life!”

Romeo glared at him. “Love _is_ a real problem--or, well, being out of love is a problem.” He shook off the hand Mercutio dropped on his shoulder. “Besides, I had a dream last night and--”

“Oh really?” Mercutio interrupted. “Me too!” He walked backwards toward the Capulet’s house, leading the Montagues along.

Romeo looked at him in surprise. “Really? What was yours about?”

“That you’re full of shit,” Mercutio said with a wide smile, and Benvolio couldn’t stifle his laughter. Romeo shot him a look.

“Laugh and joke all you want, but what I dreamed was the truth, I can just feel it.” He shook his head. “Something bad’s gonna happen, something starting with going to this party,” Romeo said darkly, still walking forward.

“Oh my friend,” Mercutio replied, moving back to walk beside Romeo again, “I know what brought you this dream.”

And then, as was his way, Mercutio launched into some strange, theatrical story about a fairy who came to people and gave them dreams at night. He painted the whole picture while gesturing wildly: a tiny fairy in a hazelnut shell being pulled by a bug, flying through the night to give the wealthy dreams about riches and priests dreams about tithes and soldiers dreams about battle and girls dreams about sex and--

“God, enough!” Romeo finally said, laughing now. "Such bullshit!”

“Of course it is!” Mercutio announced. “Because dreams _are_ bullshit, and you're being moody and ridiculous." He linked arms with Romeo and practically dragged him forward. "God, buck up, little pup! We’ve got a whole night of fun ahead of us! The party’s just starting!”

Benvolio checked his phone and looked back up at the massive Capulet manor coming into view. A twitch of nerves went through him.

Mercutio seemed to notice and approached him now, eyebrow raised. "Do I need to tell _you_ about Queen Mab now too?"

Benvolio snorted. "Queen Mab. God, you're something else."

Mercutio grinned and covered his heart. "Thank you!" 

“This is gonna be terrible,” Romeo replied, sighing. “I just know it. But!” he added quickly, looking between his friends’ faces as Mercutio started to say something again, "at this point, lead me where you want me to go. I’m in it now.”

“That’s better!” Mercutio nearly shouted, starting forward at a quicker pace, raising his hand in a fake toast. "To the booze and women!"

“To the booze and women,” Benvolio echoed, mimicking the gesture with a bit less enthusiasm, which just made Mercutio laugh and look back at him with a pleasant, crooked smile.

Just as they got to the front doors where guests were being admitted, they pulled down their masks to cover their faces. Granted, anyone who saw Mercutio, masked or not, would know immediately who he was, and so with him in the front, they were let in without more than a passing glance. They were a bit late, though, and had missed the dinner but were just in time for the dancing to start. 

The Capulet ballroom was massive and hung all over with lights and already full of people milling around and drinking. Whatever slight misgivings Benvolio might have had about being Montagues at a party immediately disappeared as he realized just how unrecognizable they really would be here. With everyone in different kinds and styles of masks, whether on their faces or held in front of them, and in every kind of formal dress, they really could have been anyone. How would anyone have known? A few people weren’t in masks at all or were, like Mercutio, recognizable regardless: the patriarch of the Capulets with his impressive girth and always slightly pinched expression; Lady Capulet who clearly thought herself too pretty to wear a mask or to be stuck near her husband all night; and of course Tybalt Capulet who liked to start fights with Montagues for fun and had the impressive bulk to back up his threats. Benvolio felt a bit like he’d been trained since birth to recognize them--as threats and enemies and dangers. He adjusted his mask, making sure it would stay in place, and followed Mercutio toward the bar. No one had to know who they were. For once, he didn’t have to think of them as anything but vague acquaintances.

The three interlopers got drinks and lingered by the bar, watching the people move through the room. Mercutio had been right; there _were_ pretty people here from all over the city--women in gowns and short dresses and glittering masks and jewelry, men in all varieties of suits and clothes, decked out with shining watches and bright colored extras. Benvolio scanned the crowd, not sure what he was looking for. He had heard that the Capulets' daughter was especially pretty, but even without a mask, he wouldn't have recognized her, which was slightly unnerving. He'd just have to hope that if he did end up talking to anyone, it wouldn't be a mortal enemy.

Romeo, after a moment, wandered off claiming to need to find a bathroom, and Mercutio's only response was something inappropriate while Benvolio's was just to shove Mercutio in the side until he shut up again. With Romeo gone, the two remaining men listened to the rising music and watched the people who moved out to dance.

Benvolio let his eyes track over an attractive blonde girl in a slinky green dress, eyeing her appreciatively. He didn't know if she was a Capulet, didn't recognize her at all, but kept her in his mind to maybe track down later when he'd had a few drinks and was looking to dance and flirt a little.

Mercutio, of course, had other ideas. He grunted a laugh and shoved Benvolio in her direction. 

“Go get her, dummy,” he insisted, still grinning at him.

Stumbling over himself, Benvolio looked back at him, sure his own face was going embarrassingly red, but Mercutio had already moved to chat up the handsome bartender, which seemed about right. So Benvolio approached the girl in green and awkwardly cleared his throat near her, unsure what the hell he was doing. She looked back at him through her lacey mask, face somewhat unreadable.

“Would you, uh, want to dance?” he asked, pretty sure his tongue had somehow gotten too big for his mouth, but the girl just grinned.

“Sure,” she said, accepting his offered hand, and they headed out onto the dance floor.

Somewhere behind him, Benvolio thought he heard Mercutio shouting something inappropriate and encouraging. He refused to look back, sure his face was still very red even under the mask. Still, he took the girl’s hands and started into a slightly stiff dance. Better stiff than stepping all over her feet. The girl giggled again.

“So what’s your name?” she asked, allowing herself to be moved along by Benvolio’s steps.

“Oh, uh,” he replied, his mind going instantly to panic before he calmed it down again. “Ben,” he offered, smiling. “What about you?”

“Jessica,” she replied with a smile, and took a twirl before returning to his hands. “Nice to meet you Ben. I don’t think I’ve seen you at a Capulet function before.”

“Well, I mean,” Benvolio said with his own smile, some of his nervousness receding, “with the masks and everything, how would any of us know? Tonight, I'm just some dashing masked stranger."

Jessica actually laughed at that and pulled in a little closer as more people joined them on the dance floor. They danced through the rest of the song, but their conversation had stalled out after that. They did make occasional comments about the music or the people around them or the venue, but it was awkward, and Benvolio's discomfort was returning. When the song ended, Jessica thanked him and dropped his hands and headed toward a group of other girls all waiting off to the side. 

Benvolio headed immediately back toward the bar, needing at least two or three more drinks before he tried something like that again.

Mercutio was still there, now flirting with a girl while she waited for her glass of wine, but once she’d moved aside, Benvolio took her place.

“Struck out already?” Mercutio teased, eyeing him as he took a few large swallows and finished his drink. He shoved his glass back toward the bartender.

Benvolio felt himself blushing again and gestured for the bartender to make him two more of whatever Mercutio had just been having. “Yeah, I guess I did,” he said, leaning on an elbow as he waited. "I'm just… I've just been shit with girls recently."

Mercutio shrugged and shoved himself a bit closer to Benvolio until they were hip to hip. Something in Benvolio’s middle twitched.

“Eh, it happens," Mercutio replied. "Girls are fickle."

"Says the ficklest man in Verona," Benvolio joked, taking the offered glass from the bartender.

"Hey!" Mercutio said, sounding indignant. "I'm only fickle when I'm with the _wrong_ person."

"Then I guess I've never seen you with the right person," Benvolio responded with a laugh.

Mercutio's face had gone somewhat unreadable under the mask, but it cleared quickly back into a smile. "Guess not," he replied, butting a shoulder against Benvolio's, "and hey, girls or not, you’ve always got me.” 

His smile was cheeky, and Benvolio wasn’t sure what to say in response to that. He did shoot Mercutio a slightly lopsided smile and accepted the next drink once it was ready.

He and Mercutio both turned, drinks in hand, to look back at the dance floor. Benvolio finished one drink too quickly and then held the other a little longer in his hands while he watched the swirls of colors and lights. It was only then that he realized he’d completely lost track of Romeo, who had never returned to them. The “keep track of your cousin, Benvolio” instinct immediately made him start, and he nervously scanned the crowd for him. God, what if he’d been found out? What if Tybalt was beating the shit out of him already? All because Benvolio had been distracted and flirting? Damn it--

Tybalt, he noted with a jot of relief, was still in the room and not near Romeo at all, although he was lurking a bit like a bodyguard off to the side and scowling at the crowd of dancers. Still no Romeo, though, although in his mask and fairly common dress clothes, he could have been any number of people. 

Mercutio was the one to actually find him, slouched off to the side of the room and slowly drinking a beer and watching the people flow around him. Benvolio let out a sigh of relief and took another drink.

“You’re really the sheepdog for that stupid little lamb, aren’t you?” Mercutio joked, watching him clearly even through the mask.

Benvolio took another swallow of his drink, which was somehow both overly sweet and bitterly acrid at once, which made him cough. 

“Yeah, I guess,” he admitted finally, glancing back at Romeo to be sure he was still in the same place.

“But why?” Mercutio asked, leaning forward on his elbow and watching Benvolio with a penetrating interest.

He wasn’t used to being looked at so closely. “Well, I mean…” Benvolio took another drink of the unpleasant whatever-it-was and finished, “Because he _is_ a stupid lamb a lot of the time and his parents want to be sure he’s ok. So in comes responsible ol’ me.”

Mercutio nodded and took another drink too, still watching Benvolio with those eyes that were somehow still very blue and very piercing even through the shadow from the mask. A strange, almost-seriousness had come to Mercutio's face.

“Sure,” he said after a moment, “but what do _you_ want?”

Benvolio nervously drained his drink and set it on the bar again, feeling oddly exposed, like a butterfly pinned to a board, even under the clothes and with his face covered. Mercutio seemed to do that to him.

“Well, I guess… I don't know,” Benvolio answered, giving a vague shrug.

"Bullshit," Mercutio said, snapping his fingers for another drink. "What do you _want_ , Ben?"

Benvolio wished he had something more to drink, face feeling warm, and actually tried to consider. "Well, I guess," he said finally, "you, Merc."

Even behind the mask, Mercutio’s eyebrows snapped up, and Benvolio realized what he’d said with a start.

“No, no, I mean--what you have, the not-caring! And your friendship! You--being someone who doesn’t _just_ look at me like Romeo’s cousin!” he said quickly, sputtering and flapping his hands around like an idiot. 

Luckily, Mercutio had started laughing, although his expression was a bit unreadable behind the mark. He moved closer to Benvolio again and looped an arm once more around his waist. It was steadying, actually, that hand holding just under his ribs.

“Nah, I get it,” Mercutio replied. “The not-caring's an artform, my friend, cultivated with time and practice. But that feeling, being overshadowed?" He raised a glass. "My cousin’s a _prince_ , remember?”

Benvolio managed a smile, more of his lingering nervousness fading. Without meaning to, he scanned back for Romeo again. Amazingly, he wasn’t slouching off by the wall again but had approached some small-ish girl in white and was talking with her earnestly, their heads bowed together.

“Well, look at him go,” Mercutio said, following Benvolio’s gaze.

As they both watched, Romeo leaned in and stole a shy kiss from the girl in white. She actually brought a hand up to cup his face and kiss him again.

Mercutio gave a low whistle, and Benvolio couldn’t seem to stop staring, surprised despite himself

“Um… I guess he’s over Rosalind,” he said shortly, and Mercutio laughed.

“Well, good for him,” Mercutio said and motioned for another drink. “Cheers to the lover boy!”

Benvolio chuckled and accepted, clinking the newly offered glass against Mercutio’s, and they both drank, looking at each other now instead of Romeo and his mystery woman.

The party continued, and the pair continued to drink, although they did occasionally stop to talk or dance with girls. With a few drinks in him, Benvolio was less awkward about asking girls and the conversation flowed a bit easier, but his dancing was taking a bit of a dive the further into the night it got. Mercutio was just getting louder with each passing hour, his voice rising increasingly over the sounds of the rest of the party. When he did dance, he swept his partner around wildly, making her laugh. Benvolio still found himself orienting toward the other man, using him as a kind of home base to return to.

By the end of the night (which was actually very early in the morning) when the guests were being shooed out of the ballroom, he’d nearly forgotten about Romeo. 

Benvolio remembered him with a lurch and looked through the crowd of people all flowing out the main doors and hailing cabs and calling drivers and stumbling against each other. Most of them had shed their masks, which did make it a bit easier, but there was no Romeo to be found. Benvolio even tried looking for the mystery girl in white, or even for Tybalt, just in case, but neither of them were anywhere around either. Benvolio ripped off his mask and stuffed it in his pocket, as if that was somehow what had made him unable to find Romeo.

There was still no sign.

His guts twisted with worry, and without thinking, he grabbed Mercutio’s hand and squeezed hard. Mercutio looked over at him in surprise, some sort of joke immediately on his lips, but it fell away when he noted the panicked look on Benvolio’s face.

“Romeo,” Benvolio slurred, shaking Mercutio’s hand like that would help somehow. “Have you seen Romeo?”

“Not since he was kissing that girl,” Mercutio replied, voice only slightly less liquid than Benvolio’s. 

Benvolio’s face must have gone up a notch in desperate panic, because Mercutio took off his own mask and said seriously, “We’ll look for him. He can’t be that far, right? Maybe he snuck off somewhere with that girl. Or maybe he went home.” He tugged on Benvolio’s hand. “Relax. We’ll find him.”

They snuck back in to circle through the ballroom until someone chased them out, and then they wandered through the grounds and out into the gardens beside the estate. It was getting increasingly empty except for servants starting to clean up and security guards rounding up the stragglers. Benvolio thought he caught sight of Romeo for a moment darting off over a wall, but he couldn't be sure anymore. Regardless, he tugged Mercutio after him.

They wandered for what felt a long time, and Benvolio's nerves began to get swallowed under the larger wave of tiredness and intoxication. He looked at the garden, the coolness of the night on his face and through his sweaty hair. The sky overhead was clear and twinkling, although when Benvolio looked up at it, the stars wobbled and spun out of alignment. 

"Cassiopeia," he muttered at the crown-shape above, the points swaying, and added, with a vague nod to no one, "Ursa--ursa major."

"What are you saying over there?" Mercutio asked, voice colored with laughter.

Benvolio looked back over at him as Mercutio pulled off his suit jacket, his hair going increasingly wild as the night progressed.

"Looking for Romeo," Benvolio answered finally. 

He reached into his pocket, poking around for his phone, which he finally pulled out only to see it was dead. It was a crappy phone that he could basically only use for emergencies, so he shouldn't have been surprised, but it still irritated him.

Benvolio sighed and looked over at Mercutio, waving his phone his way. "You call him!"

"Oh no!" Mercutio said, flourishing with both arms. "I'll conjure him!" He cupped his hands to his mouth. "Romeo! Lover! Madman! Give us a sign!"

Benvolio laughed and wandered closer to him, reaching out to be sure they wouldn't get separated. Mercutio caught his hand.

"That bastard's ignoring us!" Mercutio said, swinging Benvolio's hand. He turned to shout back out at the flowering trees and manicured plant beds. "I summon you, Romeo, by Ros--Rosalie?" he questioned, looking at Benvolio, who shook his head. "Rosaline? That new girl? Whoever!" He made a curvaceous shape with his free hand. "Any beautiful woman will do. By her eyes, her lips, her legs and trembling thighs and especially that lovely space between those thighs!" He let Benvolio hand go to continue his gesture, going a bit pornographic with his hand movements, which made Benvolio laugh and blush again. "I command you, Romeo!" Another wild gesture. "Appear!"

The garden remained silent and dark except for the occasional rustle of the wind through the branches, sending the smell of blossoms down to them.

"He's probably hiding on purpose right now," Benvolio muttered, "with the shit you're saying."

"That's unfair," Mercurio said as they wandered forward, "I'm not saying anything that isn't true! Who wouldn't want to be conjured by a beautiful girl?"

Benvolio grunted.

"Or in my case," Mercutio replied, grinning at him, "a beautiful anyone."

Benvolio laughed and stumbled a little. "That does sound like you."

"What about you, then?" Mercutio said, voice still pitched for jokes, although Benvolio wasn’t entirely sure where this was going.

"What about me?" he asked.

"Girls? Boys? Neither? Both? Everyone at once in a big sexy pile?" Mercutio teased, turning to face him and walk backwards, only stumbling a little, and Benvolio laughed again. "I could never get a full read on you."

"Really?" Benvolio asked in surprise, but then did consider it in his drunken brain, scanning backwards for his attractions. He was just attracted to who he was attracted to and hadn’t given it much thought beyond that.

"Huh," he said, by way of answer and continued wandering forward and up to Mercutio's side again, who said nothing else.

The horizon was just beginning to lighten, and the world was as quiet as a newly closed tomb, even perfumed the same way with flowers.

"He's got to have gone home, right?" Benvolio said to the quiet, or maybe to his lingering guilt. "By now?"

Mercutio made a noise that might have been agreement but continued wandering forward.

"Or he's hiding," Benvolio muttered, squinting at the garden. "Dark and blind like his love."

Mercutio laughed. "What does that mean?"

"I dunno," Benvolio replied honestly, shaking his head. "I'm just…" He gestured vaguely out at the garden.

"He's with that girl, or he's under a medlars tree wishing it was that girl," Mercutio said, smirking again.

Benvolio snorted. "You're ridiculous."

"Romeo'll be a poperin pear and pop himself into that most _succulent_ fruit," Mercutio continued with a hip thrust before throwing an arm around Benvolio's waist and squeezing him close. Benvolio just laughed again.

"Is everything sex with you?" he asked, stumbling against Mercutio as they began to circle back toward the garden entrance, still keeping an eye out. "Don't get me wrong, I like sex as much as the next guy, but..." 

"Yeah, well, it's..." Mercutio murmured back, trailing off and then bumping his head against Benvolio's jaw in a way that was almost a nuzzle. 

For a moment he lingered there, lips just brushing Benvolio's throat. Benvolio could feel the part of his lips, breath passing softly over his skin. A shiver went up his neck, and he looked down, coloring again. Mercutio raised his head, lingered there, face so close and beautiful and open under the starlight. Without thinking, Benvolio bent and just barely brushed Mercutio's lips with his own. It was fleeting, nothing really at all, gone before he could even register entirely what he'd done.

Mercutio pulled back, blinking at him for a moment, and Benvolio stepped back too, suddenly unsure. Maybe it hadn't happened, or if it had, hadn't been welcome. Maybe it was just the alcohol, just the proximity. He looked away and back up at the stars.

There was what felt like a very long pause before Mercutio sighed dramatically and said, "Ugh, I miss my bed." He gestured out to the garden. "Even I can't just sleep out here. Can we go home?"

Benvolio looked once more at the garden, the empty streets around them, the blush of dawn drifting upward into the sky.

"Yeah, let's go," he admitted with a lingering twinge of anxiety. "There's no reason to keep looking if Romeo doesn't wanna be found."

It didn't take too long to get a cab and slump into the backseat together. Mercutio, all limbs and hair, shifted closer and dropped his head on Benvolio's shoulder with a laborious sigh. He rubbed his cheek against the hard curve there, grumbling to himself, and pressed in closer, until most of his body was snuggled up against the other man's side. Benvolio stiffened, nervous with the intimacy of it, but then remembered it was just Mercutio. It was ok if it was Mercutio, for whatever reason. In fact, he rested his own cheek against Mercutio's head, suddenly flooded with the slightly sweaty, slightly flowery scent of his hair. He let his eyes drift closed, felt the tension wash out of his body as he allowed himself to settle further against Mercutio's side.

It shouldn't have been so comfortable.

Mercutio muttered something unintelligible to his shoulder, but Benvolio just shifted his cheek against the other man's hair and smiled to himself. He was tired, and the world still felt slightly out of focus, and his mouth was strangely sandy, but the parts of him touching Mercutio were steady, warm, cozy. He rubbed the curve of his cheek against the other man's hair and thought he felt a rumble of laughter.

The rest of the drive was quiet.

They got to Benvolio's house first, and he was jostled from his near-doze by the stop of the car. He shifted, squinted at the window and the early morning outside, and then looked down at the ruffled shape of Mercutio's head still on his shoulder. He shrugged, forcing the other man to lift his head and blink at him.

"We home?" Mercutio asked blearily, giving him a lopsided smile. There was something in his expression Benvolio didn't entirely understand, the slightly lowered lids, the warm curve of his mouth.

Benvolio gave a light laugh, too tired to deal with anything beyond getting back to his own bed. "Well, _I'm_ home if that's what you mean."

Mercutio stared at him for what felt like a long moment, those blue eyes almost too vivid after the unending night.

"Right. Got it," he said at last, sitting back. He gave a slow almost-smile. "Then goodnight, Ben."

Benvolio's forehead wrinkled, feeling a bit like he'd done something wrong but didn't know what it was. "Ok. Yeah." He slid off the seat and climbed outside, stopping to lean back down with the door held in one hand to steady him. "Get home safe, ok Merc? And… see you tomorrow--er, later today maybe?"

"Will do," Mercutio said with a raised hand and a more natural smile. "And of course. You know I'm always around--always available."

Benvolio nodded, shut the door. The car pulled away. His chest gave an odd sort of ache that wasn't quite the exhaustion, or the worry about Romeo, or the clearly oncoming hangover. He didn't have a word for what it actually was.

Chapter 4 

Romeo apparently hadn't come home the night before, and Benvolio felt a terrible guilt mingled with his terrible headache. His parents asked about it as soon as he dragged himself back out of his bed around mid afternoon, but he mostly ignored them and headed for the town square. That was where Mercutio would be, and likely where Romeo would be if he did decide to try to find them. Which hopefully he would. If not… Benvolio rubbed hard at his temples.

God's sake, he was a sheepdog.

Benvolio pulled on his jacket and stormed outside toward the usual meeting place. He felt a bit like a bag of ceramics someone had dropped down the stairs: all broken pieces banging around inside him. He pinched the bridge of his nose. Something about the previous night had his stomach tight: the party, the dancing, the garden, the car ride back. He walked faster and, by habit, kept an eye out for Capulets, and hoped everything would somehow get resolved now that the sun was high and the day was clear and life could continue like normal.

Romeo was in the town square with Mercutio, which Benvolio noted without much emotion at all except a wash of relief, and homed in instead on Mercutio. There was a full, nervous rise in his stomach at seeing him again, which didn't make sense really at all. Yet there it was, lurching inside him at the way Mercutio threw his head back to laugh, the way he over-exaggerated his gestures, the way his eyes looked like storm waves in the yellow of the sun.

"Ben's still alive!" Mercutio announced triumphantly when he caught sight of him. "I was just guilting your cousin about the way he ran off last night."

Romeo rolled his eyes, gave Benvolio a nod of acknowledgement, and turned back to Mercutio. "Well, I'm sorry that what I was doing couldn't wait for you two drunken idiots."

"You mean _who_ you were doing," Mercutio said with a raised eyebrow and an elbow to Romeo's side.

Benvolio noted curiously that Romeo laughed but didn't deny it. He was looking better too, brighter in the eyes and a constant bit of smirk always about to pull at the corner of his mouth. Clearly he was ok, had been ok all night without Benvolio and Mercutio.

It was good he was happy and safe after they'd lost him, but something about it, Romeo's flippancy, his lack of remorse, prickled at Benvolio's skin. His two friends had, of course, launched into a back and forth of increasingly lewd jokes, but he found he couldn't join them. Maybe it was just the headache. Maybe it was last night. Maybe it was Romeo. Maybe it was just him.

They all fell so succinctly into their roles--the romantic Romeo, the joking Mercutio, the straight man Benvolio--that he immediately had the urge to ruin it somehow. Force them to act differently, be something else, give him a chance to play another part.

But he didn't do anything. He listened and he chuckled along at the jokes and he watched the banter progress. 

In some dim part of his brain, Benvolio had thought that something had maybe changed between him and Mercutio last night, that maybe their relationship had shifted somehow. Maybe they wouldn't just fall into the same roles they always had. Parts of the night before were blurry, more dream than substance but still, he'd thought maybe…

Mercutio was perfectly the same, all noise and humor and theatrics, so no, Benvolio must have imagined anything between them. Or almost the same, almost like always, except, Benvolio noticed with a twist in his gut, Mercutio hadn't touched him at all. By now, he'd have gotten an arm around his waist or a tussle through his hair or at least some sort of playful slap or prod. Instead, Mercutio joked and talked and gestured and included Benvolio in whatever foolishness was happening, but always from at least an arm's length.

With anyone else, a perfectly normal and friendly interaction. From Mercutio, it felt like a wall erected brick by brick between them, and Benvolio didn't know why.

His stomach had gone hollow. He thought about just going back home, crawling back into bed, waiting until tomorrow when he could comfortably return to the trio they always were.

Even as he considered this idea, some very large woman caught his attention as she pushed into the square. She was huffing and puffing and going blotchy red in her face, her white shirt damp with sweat. She was looking and bouncing around almost frantically, in some sort of worked up state that made him think, for some reason, of a parade balloon caught in too much wind.

Maybe it was the hangover or his irritation, but Benvolio just found the whole scene funny.

Mercutio was in the midst of some comment about "finding a hole to hide his toy in" when Benvolio motioned sharply at him.

"Stop joking about your dick for a second," Benvolio said, nodding toward the flustered hen of a woman, who seemed to be coming toward them.

"Oh, is it getting a bit too much for you to handle, Ben?" Mercutio replied, but he followed his gaze and laughed. "Here's something new."

"That a ship pretty far from the shore," Benvolio threw out and was rewarded with a surprised laugh from Mercutio and a hand on his arm.

"That's not very appropriate, my friend," Mercutio said, chuckling at him, hand still lingering, even if just barely, as if Mercutio was waiting for clearer permission. At least he was touching him again.

Benvolio sent him a look, trying to keep the fondness off his face and keep the joke going. "Like you've ever been appropriate a day in your life."

Mercutio chuckled again. "That's true. But it looks like the ship's coming this way."

It was true. The woman stopped before them, leaning forward slightly to catch her breath while she panted and mopped at her sweaty forehead. They only then noticed that she was being trailed by a smaller man who came quickly up beside her now. She motioned to him, still gasping, and he produced a fan which she immediately flapped toward her face.

"Might as well just cover the whole face with the fan at this point," Mercutio muttered, leaning into Benvolio a little more, and Benvolio hushed him, unable to suppress a grin.

"Good morning, boys," the woman said finally, looking around at them.

"Good afternoon, fair lady," Mercutio said with a bit of a bow.

The woman squinted up at the sky. "Is it really afternoon?"

"Oh yes," Mercutio said, "the hand of the clock has definitely already thrust--" he illustrated with a sharp jut of his hips, "it's prick well past noon."

The woman glared at him, fanning herself again. "What… what on _earth_ sort of man are you?"

"Oh you know," Mercutio replied, "just a man specially made for trouble." 

He smiled sweetly, and the woman blinked at him again and then looked at Benvolio in confusion.

"Don't mind him," Benvolio said. "He's an idiot."

Mercutio gasped and stared at him with a theatrical shock, but Benvolio just laughed again.

The woman shook her head after a moment and looked at Benvolio and then Romeo.

"Can any of you tell me where I might find Romeo Montague?" she asked, fluttering her fan again.

Mercutio and Benvolio must have been shooting Romeo similarly teasing and surprised looks, and the woman followed their gaze. 

"I guess that'd be me, ma'am," Romeo replied, shifting awkwardly. He glanced at Benvolio and Mercutio again. "Uh, maybe we should step away for a bit."

"More of that _urgent business_ , I bet," Benvolio said, letting just a twinge of bitterness come out in his words.

"Well she's a lot older than I would've imagined but who am I to judge?" Mercutio raised an eyebrow at Benvolio, who couldn't help but laugh again.

Romeo scowled at them. "Give us a bit, ok? Just…" He motioned at them sharply to leave.

"Rudely dismissed," Mercutio said, covering his heart. "Come on, Ben, we don't need him anyway."

He looped his arm with Benvolio's and turned, pulling them both away, but Benvolio looked back over his shoulder a moment.

"Please actually come home tonight," he said, a bit more sharply than he meant to, and Romeo's face twitched with surprise. "Or at least tell someone where you are."

"Yeah!" Mercutio echoed, also over his shoulder, "stop worrying your cousin!"

Romeo waved by way of answer and then followed after the large woman while Mercutio and Benvolio headed in the opposite direction. They were still linked arm to arm, and Benvolio occasionally felt the odd or uncomfortable looks they received. Mercutio, whether he noticed or not, was still making jokes about Romeo and the woman from the square, and it was so reassuring to be touching again, the way they'd been last night, that Benvolio decided to ignore any of the looks. Let people think what they wanted. It was just Mercutio, the way he was. The way they were.

Benvolio listened and laughed along at what Mercutio was saying for a while, but did finally ask, "Should we go try to find Romeo again? Figure out what he's being all sneaky about?"

Mercutio shot him a look. "Do you want to because you're a nosy friend or because you think you have to?"

Benvolio grunted, caught by surprise. "Don't just ask me things like that like you're suddenly getting philosophical."

"What I'm getting," Mercutio replied with a laugh, "is hungry. Come on."

He hauled him into a restaurant, and they ordered and ate and talked and laughed and Mercutio paid the bill, and by the time they left, evening was just starting to smudge the horizon and the world felt back to normal. In fact, Benvolio was feeling warm and pleasant again, and he found he didn't quite want the day to end. 

They found themselves wandering back out through the garden near the Capulet mansion, but for once, Benvolio wasn't keeping an eye out. He was just laughing at Mercutio as he told some ridiculous story and gesticulated wildly beside him. The rest of the city felt strangely far away, the garden abandoned and noise of the street lost behind them.

Chapter 5

Somehow, as the sky darkened, and the stars began to emerge, Benvolio and Mercutio found themselves on their backs in the grass staring up at the sky. Even Mercutio had gone a bit quiet looking up and studying the patterns of stars as they emerged and grew more brilliant. The breeze blew the smell of the blossoms across them and sent tendrils of Benvolio's hair loose and blowing against his forehead. He glanced over at Mercutio, his brow furrowed up at the sky, as his hair was tangled into a wild swirl against the grass. He caught Benvolio looking and grinned briefly before looking back up at the stars and raising a hand to point around at them.

"Aren't there supposed to be shapes up there? Stories or myths or something?" he asked, gesturing around. 

Benvolio smiled. "Yeah," he answered and pointed at one he knew. "Ursa Major," he said, tracing the outline, "or the big dipper."

"A dipper?" Mercutio said. "Where's the story in that?"

"Well, _ursa_ means 'bear'," Benvolio said with a chuckle, "if you like that better."

"Big bear," Mercutio said with a grunt. "Eh, that's something, but I definitely don't see a bear."

"Well," Benvolio said, tracing out the shape again with a grin, "it's not like it's photo realistic."

Mercutio laughed and looked over at him again. "Got any other star shapes in that head of yours?"

Benvolio looked back up at the sky, surprised Mercutio was interested, that he'd actually want to listen to Benvolio talk about something so stupid. Warmth bloomed in his chest, and he shifted closer to Mercutio’s side.

"Well," Benvolio said, tracing where Mercutio could see, "there’s Virgo--"

"The virgin?" Mercutio said with mock distaste. "You think I'm interested in _virgins_?"

Benvolio laughed. "Nah, I guess not. Let's see…" 

He looked for other constellations, the patterns and stories he'd learned as a child. He remembered wandering around at night with Romeo, looking up at them and trying to find the shapes he’d seen in books, trying to point them out to his cousin. Romeo hadn’t been terribly interested, so Benvolio had kept it to himself, continuing to read and study and carry the words and stories around in his brains the older he got. He didn't know why he liked them, the stars, the stories, the roots of words and the breakdowns of language. There was simply something for him in the naming, the knowing, the understanding.

Mercutio grabbed his raised hand and used it to point. "What's that stuff there?"

"Uh, not really anything," Benvolio said with a chuckle, Mercutio's hand surprisingly warm while wrapped around his. "You're close to Bootes, though." Benvolio traced with Mercutio's hand still holding his. "He guards the two bears." He pointed again. "Major and minor."

Benvolio turned to watch Mercutio's face, and even in the gloom it was lit with something like delight.

"Can't believe you know all these," he said, and there was something different in his voice, less teasing, less noise. "All the patterns, all the stories."

Benvolio felt himself blush. "Yeah well, it's not like it's useful for anything--"

"I think it's useful," Mercutio interrupted, looking over at him. "What's more useful than stories? Well," he amended quickly, "probably lots of things, but you know what I mean." He smiled. "Stories, beauty, all of that… it matters."

Benvolio met his eyes, gratified and acutely aware of their hands, their proximity, the coolness of the grass and the night compared to the heat in his face. Mercutio smiled, their hands still joined and pointed above.

"Come on," Mercutio said, looking back up and squeezing his hand. "Tell me about another one."

Benvolio smiled to himself and guided their hands in another direction, still a bit amazed by Mercutio's desire to listen, to be so near him. 

"Cassiopeia," he said, tracing the 'W' shape. "The queen."

"She got a story?"

Benvolio wet his lips. "Um, I think she was the one who was so cocky about her beauty--"

"Sounds like a woman," Mercutio grunted with a laugh.

"--that the sea god sent a monster to wreck the kingdom," Benvolio continued, shooting him a grin. "She chained her daughter to a rock to sacrifice to the monster, to save the kingdom."

Mercutio grunted a laugh. "A virgin again probably."

Benvolio chuckled. "Probably. But lucky for the princess, some hero or other--Perseus I think--came and rescued her and killed the monster and I think he then got to marry her. Something like that." He traced the "W" again. "Happily ever after I guess."

"Not very romantic," Mercutio said with a noise in his throat. "Angry gods, monsters, being forced to marry some random dude."

Benvolio laughed. "Now you want romance? Since when?"

There was a long pause, which surprised Benvolio enough to look over. Mercutio was watching him with something of that expression from the cab, something soft and almost vulnerable in his face.

"Well," he said, voice coming out a bit husky, "I wouldn't mind romance so much with the right person."

Benvolio felt their hands lower, still joined, between them, and he kept his eyes on Mercutio's face. His heart seemed to have moved up to his throat, and he couldn't look away. 

"Yeah," he managed softly, eyes moving from the part of the other man's lips and back to his eyes. "Probably not so bad then." 

Mercutio's lids lowered, his eyes soft. He rolled to his side while Benvolio held still, not sure he was breathing. Almost hesitant, which was the first time Benvolio could ever remember seeing him not one hundred present cock-sure at all times, Mercutio moved closer, dipped his head. Benvolio managed a shaky breath.

Then Mercutio's lips were on his, plush and gentle, which seemed almost out of character. Maybe it should have felt strange or different or wrong, kissing a man for the first time. It didn't, though. Those lips, the feel and taste of them, were only different than the lips he'd kissed before in that they were better.

Mercutio drew back and looked down at him. "Um, we don't have alcohol as an excuse this time." He was clearly trying for unconcerned teasing, but he missed the mark by a mile. "Are you actually…?" 

Benvolio looked up at him, considering the question, and found he really didn't need to. 

Without thinking, without worrying, without planning, Benvolio pulled Mercutio's face down to kiss him again. Mercutio made a sort of gratifying noise and began to kiss back, more intently this time, in a way that made Benvolio's blood sizzle. The hand that wasn't still locked with Mercutio's moved up to run into his wild mess of sandy hair, keeping his face near. The kiss deepened, Mercutio's body pushing even closer to his. He could feel every angle, every breath, every movement of his muscles. With anyone else it would have been too much, too close, too intense, but it was just Mercutio, which seemed right somehow. Benvolio kissed him again.

Mercutio's other hand was running up his side, over his chest, to cup his jaw. His fingertips brushed against the bit of stubble there, rubbed softly along the not-so-sharp line of his jaw as if it had actually been carved by a sculptor. His finger ran over his cheek, into his hair, to caress the back of his head as if he was something both delicate and exquisite, rather than just a lesser Montague. Benvolio shivered, shifted their joined hands to knot their fingers together and squeeze. Mercutio squeezed back.

He didn't know how long they lay that way, bodies and lips pressed together, moving together, before Mercutio finally drew back and looked down at him. Benvolio could only stare up, breathless and thoughtless and made entirely of sizzling nerve endings. 

"Probably shouldn't do anything else out in the open like we are," Mercutio said, and then added with a grin, "although it'd scandalize the hell out of the Capulets, which might be satisfying."

Benvolio blushed but smiled, feeling the nervous but somewhat eager way his body responded to the words, to the continued press of Mercutio's body.

"Yeah," he managed, "probably not--but don't," he added quickly, squeezing Mercutio's hand again, "go anywhere, ok?"

Mercutio smiled and kissed him again. "Where am I gonna go?" he asked just above Benvolio's mouth, and then nuzzled his nose with his own, which made Benvolio grin. "Besides, there's gotta be more stars for you to tell me about, since apparently you've got all this knowledge you were keeping from me." 

"I wasn't keeping it from you," Benvolio said as Mercutio lay back down and settled against his side. "Just… no one asked."

"Well I'm asking," Mercutio protested, nestling further into his shoulder.

"Yeah," Benvolio said, shifting to rest his cheek against Mercutio's head again. "Yeah, you are the one that actually asks." Before he could find a way to talk himself out of it, he tilted to kiss the top of Mercutio's head. "Now what else do you wanna know?"

"Anything," Mercutio responded with a contented sigh, "as long as it comes from you."

Chapter 6 

Benvolio woke up with a crick in his neck and his skin weirdly clammy. He shifted slightly and blinked up at the blue of the sky and realized with a start that he was outside, in the prickly grass, covered in dew, and still tucked up with Mercutio. He didn't remember them falling asleep.

At his movements, Mercutio moved too, groaning loudly as he uncurled from Benvolio's side.

"Did we sleep in a damn field?" he grumbled, squinting over at Benvolio and then out at the garden around them. "And we didn't even fuck in it first?"

Benvolio barked a laugh. "There will be no _fucking_ in _fields_ \--"

"You say that now…" Mercutio said, slinking over to lay across Benvolio again and nip lightly at the underside of his jaw.

Benvolio's body, if he'd given it the chance, would have happily gone for what Mercutio was offering, which surprised him little, but his mind took control.

"That's not a thing I should have to say at all," he grunted, ignoring Mercutio still lipping at his neck. "I have _standards_ .” He bit his lip as Mercutio did something else to his neck and tried to concentrate. “If anything like that's gonna happen, it's not gonna be in a _field_.

Mercutio drew back to look at him and ran his tongue along his lower lip, seeming to consider. "Do you _want_ something like that to happen?" he asked carefully.

Benvolio felt himself blush again, watching the early morning sun send streaks through Mercutio's hair and bring sparks to the blue of his eyes. 

"I mean," he ventured, "do you?"

Mercutio laughed. "Ben, I've wanted to do anything and everything with you since basically the day we met."

Benvolio stared up at him, waiting for the joke, the punchline, the drawback with a laugh. It didn’t come.

"That can't be true…” he said, coloring, “because… well, why?"

Mercutio laughed and returned again to scattering kisses over his neck, making Benvolio shiver. 

"Because I like you, dumbass," he said against his skin, pressing another kiss under his jaw, "you're funny and clever and you put up with my bullshit and keep me and Romeo from inadvertently killing ourselves at any given moment." 

Benvolio grunted in agreement. Then the tip of Mercutio’s tongue tracked along the underside of Benvolio's jaw, and he groaned without realizing it, which just made him blush brighter. It seemed like he must be dreaming, that this must be some alternate universe they’d stumbled into.

But Mercutio was definitely still kissing him, still running a hand up his chest as he muttered into his ear. "And you've got those long legs,” he murmured, “and those beautiful eyes, and an ass I've wanted to get my hands on since the first time you bent down in front of me…" 

He gave a slight nip to Benvolio's earlobe and chuckled at the way he shivered again.

"Jesus, Merc," Benvolio attempted, body getting away from him again, "you're gonna--fuck, I--I'm gonna--"

"And I've been flirting for _ages_ ," Mercutio purred, "wondering if you actually, you know, played for this team at all, thinking maybe you did, then assuming you didn't and damn it, Ben, you've been driving me insane, but I couldn't stop myself…" 

More lips and tongue and teeth that made Benvolio attempt some rational statement that turned to gibberish when it emerged.

He could feel Mercutio smiling. "But I just kept hoping I’d get a chance to make you swear and stammer just like that..."

Benvolio swallowed and pulled a bit away, not letting his body win out over his brain. "We're still in a field, I'd like to remind you."

Mercutio sighed and drew back to look down at him again. "Yeah, yeah, I guess. But that does circle back around," he drew a circle on Benvolio's chest, grinning "to the original question." He wet his lips again, looking almost nervous for a moment. "Do _you_ actually want this? Want… me, like that, I mean?" 

"I…" Benvolio began, biting his lips and looking up into those eyes. "Yeah, yes. I do. Because…" He ran a hand up Mercutio's back. "Because it's _you_ , and you and me, it just… feels right." He shook his head and smiled before the nerves came back to his stomach and he added, "But I, uh… I'm also, you know…" He knew he was turning more red by the second, and a smirk was starting to pull at Mercutio's lips. "I've never, um… I mean…"

"Never tasted the forbidden fruit?" Mercutio supplied, with the smirk in full bloom now. "Made friends with Ganymede? Bitten the pillow? Gone for the backdoor? Been--"

"Oh my god, stop!" Benvolio said, shoving him and laughing even while still blushing hotly. "Yes any of that, you obnoxious piece of--"

Mercutio kissed him, stopping the insult that was ready on Benvolio's tongue, and this time, the kiss was sweet and lingering. 

"Ok," Mercutio said when he drew back. "Ok." He ran a hand down Benvolio's cheek, strangely tender. "I know I joke around a lot--"

"Understatement," Benvolio said with a grin.

"-- _but,_ " Mercutio insisted, glaring at him with mock severity before softening again, "with this--with _you_ , I do take it seriously. We can do... as much or as little as you want, as fast or slow as you want…" a smirk pulled at his face again as he finished, "meaning I'd only fuck you in a field if you wanted me too."

Benvolio laughed and pushed him off. "You're ridiculous," he said, sitting up and running a hand over his face. "God, I need a shower."

Mercutio pushed himself to his feet and extended a hand back down. "I could join you," he said with a raised eyebrow, "save a little water."

Benvolio rolled his eyes but accepted the hand. "Should I just expect this all the time now?"

"Probably. Wait, did I not do this before?" Mercutio replied, looking him over. 

Benvolio grunted. "Maybe less me-specific but…" He shrugged, and Mercutio just laughed again.

"So should I take you home then?" he asked.

"Is that another euphemism or an actual suggestion?" Benvolio said, starting out of the garden and smoothing down his rumpled clothes.

Mercutio ran his tongue along his lower lip. "Either one really."

"I'll take the actual suggestion," Benvolio said. He pulled at his collar. "God, it's already too hot."

"You're too hot," Mercutio muttered back, and Benvolio shoved him with a shoulder. Mercutio just laughed and continued, running stupid puns off 'hot' as quickly as he could manage them, which, being himself, was pretty quick.

They entered the street, and immediately a sense of unease washed over Benvolio. He looked around warily, remembering just how close they were to the Capulet house. He was sure a few of the servants were Capulets too, and they were watching the pair of them with a certain level of hostility.

"Really," Benvolio murmured, looking back at Mercutio and shushing him with a gesture, "I don't like this. There are Capulets around and there'll be a fight if they see us, I can just tell."

Mercutio snorted. "Oh you sweet duckling, pretending you wouldn't throw hands at the slightest provocation."

"You sure it's me you're thinking of?" Benvolio replied, distracted and watching the people in the streets as they walked.

"Of course it is!" Mercutio announced, turning to walk backwards and gesture at him grandly, face pulled into a wide smile. "You, my friend, would fight a guy because he had a hair in his beard out of place!"

Benvolio grunted a laugh, unable to resist.

"You," Mercutio continued with mock severity, "would fight a man for daring to have the same color eyes as you--"

"Romeo's screwed then," Benvolio muttered with a grin as he gave a quick, upward nod to someone on the street, hoping to show that they weren't doing any harm, were on their way out of Capulet territory.

"Your eyes are much prettier than his," Mercutio said, acting offended. "Hazel where his are just brown, but anyway!" He spread his arms, theatrical as always, and Benvolio shot someone an apologetic look as he almost hit her as she passed. 

"Your whole pacifistic act is a long con and I know it," Mercutio continued. "You'd fight a guy for coughing and waking up that poor sleeping dog." He gestured off at someone's pet snoozing on a patio. 

Benvolio couldn't keep from laughing. "Is that so? You know me so well, do you?"

"Well I'm starting to know you, and I definitely plan to know you better," Mercutio said with a wink. 

"You're in fine form today," Benvolio said with a chuckle.

"All you, babe," Mercutio said with a wink.

"You're ridiculous," Benvolio said again, blushing a little as he looked around, although now he wasn't sure what he was more worried about: Capulets or gossips.

" _I'm_ ridiculous!" Mercutio said with another theatrical gesture. "Rich, coming from a man like you. A fighter, filled with boiling rage." Benvolio rolled his eyes and trailed after Mercutio, still in the throws of his wild description. "A man like you who'd fight with a guy for wearing a suit out of season, for having ugly shoelaces, for--" 

"Hey!" came a rough shout, cutting off Mercutio's monologue.

Benvolio, his dread returning, spun to face the caller. He felt himself pale immediately.

Tybalt, face etched up with rage, was storming toward them with a little company of other Capulets behind him.

"God damn it," Benvolio muttered, taking a step back toward Mercutio, "I told you--"

"Oh who cares?" Mercutio replied, looking suddenly irritated with the approaching company. "I'm sick of this feud shit."

The new expression on his face just added to Benvolio's anxiety.

"Gentlemen," Tybalt said with a forced calm in his voice, even while his hands balled into fists. "A word?"

"Just one?" Mercutio said, offering Tybalt a smirk. "Nothing else for us?"

"I can certainly give you something else," Tybaly growled, all pretense forgotten, "if you give me a reason."

Benvolio swallowed. "Look, we were just leaving--"

Mercutio pushed past him. "You need me to give you a reason, friend?"

Tybalt glared at him, glanced once at Benvolio, and then looked back at Mercutio.

"You hang around with Romeo Montague, the one who snuck into my family's party," Tybalt said, with a curl to his lip. "Right?"

"You have a problem with that?" Mercutio snapped back. "Got some unresolved feelings for Romeo, do ya’ Tybalt? A little jealous of his company?"

Tybalt took a step forward, and Benvolio reacted swiftly, stepping between the two and extending a hand.

"Look," he said quickly, "this doesn't have to be a big deal. Whatever's going on, we can go talk it out somewhere else." He looked at Tybalt's face, the tick in his jaw. "Either that, or just let us leave. No one wants any trouble."

"Damn Montagues," Tybalt growled, staring down Benvolio, "I should--"

"I think we can deal with this right here," Mercutio cut him off, voice rising.

"What the hell's going on here?" 

Everyone turned, noticing Romeo now, who was watching them all with a face of almost dopey amusement that seemed wildly out of place with the tension in the street. Benvolio looked at him, eyebrows raised in desperate question.

"There's the man I was looking for," Tybalt said. "You've got a lot to answer for, you son of a bitch!"

Romeo's brow furrowed as he approached, putting his hands up in surrender.

"Tybalt, I don't know what you're on about, but there's actually good reason," Romeo gave a wistful smile, "for you and I to be friends now."

Benvolio's stomach dropped. God must be testing him again.

"Romeo, how about--" he began.

Tybalt's face twisted into disgust and he shouted over him, "I'd never befriend a filthy Montague!"

He took a step forward, running into where Benvolio's hand was still keeping him and Mercutio apart. Tybalt finally looked at Benvolio, scowled, and gave a rough shove that sent him toppling backwards into the dirt. Benvolio gasped as he hit the ground, more in surprise than in pain, and looked up in time to see Mercutio launch himself wildly at Tybalt with a yell. It sent them both into a pile of thrashing limbs on the ground.

"Damn piece of shit!" Mercutio shouted as he and Tybalt scuffled. "Let's see how you like it--"

Romeo darted in, grabbing at Mercutio and trying to drag him off, while a few of the Capulets did the same. At last, they had them mostly separated, although Tybalt then took that opportunity to throw a punch at Romeo. It caught him in the side of the head, making him stumble aside, and then Mercutio was at Tybalt again. Benvolio stumbled up, brain finally snapping to action, and yelled for them to stop. He ran forward to grab Mercutio's arm, who looked back in surprise, and then Romeo pushed between Mercutio and Tybalt to keep them apart, still motioning his hand in surrender. 

"I'm not gonna fight you, Tybalt, come on!" Romeo said, turned to face him, hands open.

Tybalt glared, nostrils flaring, and paused for a moment, breathing hard and hands flexing against his sides as they moved to behind his back. Mercutio continued to snear, even with blood trickling from a split lip, although he didn't shake Benvolio from his arm.

"Cowardly bitch," Mercutio growled, using the back of his hand to rub the blood off his mouth, although Benvolio wasn't sure who he was talking to.

Tybalt's eyes flashed regardless, and he darted forward. 

Maybe he was going for Romeo. Maybe he had intended the hit for Mercutio. Benvolio watched it happen in a kind of slow motion. Whatever Tybalt had meant, Romeo managed to twitch aside so that Tybalt only grazed him and instead landed the force of his blow into Mercutio’s side. 

Mercutio yelped and stumbled back in surprise, reaching for his side, and Romeo shoved Tybalt backwards, yelling for him to stop. The other Capulets circled around, ready to fight again, but Tybalt actually looked with fright at Mercutio, who was still making noise and glaring at him. Tybalt paled but quickly motioned to the Capulets, who rallied back around him. 

Romeo shouted something at them as they turned and left, to which Tybalt yelled back, “This isn’t over!”

Most of this Benvolio only noted dimly, because he was focused on Mercutio, his forehead lined and his face scuffed with dirt and his lip starting to bead with blood again.

"Fucking _ow,_ " he said, still holding where Tybalt had last hit him.

"Are you hurt?" Benvolio said, rubbing the hair from his sweaty face and looking with concern at the split lip and then back down at Mercutio’s side.

Mercutio shook his head. "Banged up a little but nah." 

Yet he didn't move his hands from pressing into his side. Benvolio reached for them, and finally Mercutio looked down, seeming to realize what he was doing. He moved his hands slowly, and they came away bloody.

"Oh god," Benvolio said, reaching for him, panic rising in his chest now.

"What happened?" Romeo said, coming over now that the Capulets were gone.

"A scratch," Mercutio said with a grunt that might have been an attempt as a laugh. The blood was continuing to spread on his shirt, and he put his hands back over the injury. "Apparently our friend Tybalt has some tricks up his sleeves," he grunted before his eyes snapped up at Romeo. "Fuck this stupid feud, and fuck _you_ for just standing there! What the hell was--" 

He stumbled and lurched against Benvolio as he tried to take a step forward. Benvolio looped his arms around him, on the verge of true panic, pushing one of his own hands against the wound too, as if they could staunt the flow together. 

"Get a doctor!" he yelled to anyone around who might hear. "Someone help!"

The blood was sticky and hot between Benvolio’s fingers, and he looked desperately back up at Mercutio’s face. It was going a bit pale.

"Yeah," Mercutio said with another attempted laugh, "or tomorrow you might find me a _grave_ man."

"Really?" Benvolio said, tears burning at his eyes. "Now?"

"Just," Mercutio said with another wince and stumble, "who I am I guess."

"It can't be that bad," Romeo said quickly, face creased with worry.

"Oh yeah," Mercutio replied, leaning most of his weight into Benvolio now, and Benvolio shifted to keep him upright. "Not too big or too wide, right? Just a _moderate_ stab wound." He glared at Romeo again. "Seriously, fuck all of this, all of you, everyone. Fuck Tybalt especially!" he shouted at nothing.

"Come on," Benvolio said, moving forward, knowing there had to be somewhere they could go, something they could do. A hospital. A doctor’s office. Something. He kept his arms tight around Mercutio, horrified at the blood spreading on his shirt, the blood on his hands now rubbing onto Benvolio's. He walked faster, mostly carrying Mercutio now, heart a thundering drum beat in his chest.

Romeo trailed after them, reaching out uselessly.

"Mercutio I--" he tried.

"Under your arm!" Mercutio yelped, shooting another glare at Romeo. "He stabbed me under _your_ arm and you didn't do a damn thing! I'm dead because of _you_!" He stumbled and Benvolio held him tighter, trying not to look at the blood, trying to keep breathing.

Romeo fell back, staring at them helplessly, and Benvolio didn't even spare him a glance. He just focused on forward, on the weight in his arms, on Mercutio breathing raggedly against him. 

Chapter 7

The first open place he found that he thought might offer some sort of help was a chapel with some big building behind it. The doors were open as Benvolio pushed in, hauling Mercutio with him, the inside dark except for the colors of the stained glass reflecting down onto the pews. They immediately frightened a nun, who gasped at their appearance and at Benvolio's sharp, tearful bark for help. She scurried off, and Benvolio slumped to the ground with Mercutio against him. 

"Nuns, Ben?" Mercutio muttered, giving a hiccuping sort of laugh. “Really?”

Benvolio pressed his hand against the wound, as if he could keep the blood in, could knit it together with a touch, with enough willpower. 

"Well, nuns are nurses sometimes, or hospitals have churches, and I--I just…" Benvolio stammered, not entirely sure what he was saying as he stared at the wound and then back at Mercutio's face.

He was looking up at him, skin pale and his lips red, forehead tensed with pain. The stained glass cast patterns of light across his face, across his grimace and his still bright eyes. He tried to smile, and only then did Benvolio realize his own eyes were wet, the tears heavy on his face. He didn't even bother to wipe them away, unwilling to remove his hand from the wound, from supporting Mercutio's body to be sure he was still there, still with him.

"I can't lose you," he sobbed finally, clinging harder to Mercutio, to the wound that still tried to push hot blood against his palm. "God, I just… I can't…"

Mercutio tried to smile again, covered Benvolio's bloody hand with his own and held.

"I got you, Ben," Mercutio said softly, still trying to smile, hand squeezing once. “Told you I wouldn’t… go anywhere…” His breath shook and the smile turned to a wince.

Benvolio felt the tears fall harder, a vice in his chest, and curled Mercutio up against him, pressed him as much as he could to himself, shielding him against whatever might be coming. He didn't know what he could do. He only knew he couldn't let go.

"Please… please..." he begged anyone who might listen, unsure even what to ask for, how to articulate what he felt about this person curled up in his arms, the blood on his hands. It was too new, too much… “Someone help!” he yelled.

Mercutio's hand squeezed his again, and Benvolio rocked and held him. He wished Mercutio would talk again, joke again, something to show he was still himself, there was still light inside him. But there was only that clinging hand, that shivering breath, that acrid, everywhere blood.

Someone shook Benvolio's shoulder, forcing his head up to look. He had to blink through the tears, but it was a nun again, one kneeling down beside him. She had a medical kit and reached out to Mercutio's throat. Mercutio's eyes fluttered closed with a sigh, and Benvolio could only watch dimly as the nun felt for a pulse, nodded to herself, reached for their joined hands. Benvolio couldn't move them, couldn't make his hands free the wound.

"Sweetie," the nun said softly, "he's still alive, but he's going into shock and I have to see the wound."

Benvolio stared at her.

She gave him a gentle smile. "I just need you to move your hand for a second, sweetie, ok? Just pick up your hand."

Benvolio finally did, shifting grips to cling to Mercutio's hand instead as the nun pulled up his shirt and investigated the wound. Mercutio squeezed again, even lighter this time.

"Ok, pressure again, sweetie," the nun said, picking up Benvolio's hand as Mercutio's slipped from his grip. 

He made a noise, panicked as he looked at Mercutio's pale, pinched face, but the nun just pushed Benvolio's palm hard against the wound again.

The nun began to move Mercutio from within Benvolio's arms. "We need to lay him all the way down now," she said at Benvolio's frightened expression. "It's ok, sweetie. Just…"

Benvolio moved robotically to follow her directions, laying Mercutio out on the floor and then shifting to help elevate his legs a little. He watched Mercutio's face, still feeling the tears roll down his face, the salt in his mouth, as the nun got out supplies. Benvolio used his other hand to briefly wipe at his face, the burn there, and then returned to touching him. Mercutio was so pale, so quiet, his eyes shut and his lips parted. His breath was slow, steady, but the quiet felt horribly wrong. Benvolio's heart clenched in his chest.

His hand was moved by the nun again, moved to rest on Mercutio's chest now as if she knew Benvolio couldn't or wouldn't stop touching him. She put a shot of something near the wound, and Mercutio's muscles slumped further, the tension going out of his body. Benvolio reached for his face and then looked up at the nun, eyes round.

"What'd you do to him?" he demanded, voice breaking.

"Just a sedative, sweetie," she said, nodding. "Just to relax him and help with the pain."

Benvolio stared at her and then back at Mercutio, whose face did look less tense now. He looked back as the nun moved again and began doing something to the wound. Then there was a curved needle, the skin pulled tightly together over the torn hole. Stitches, Benvolio realized dimly, watching like he was very far away, seeing it all on a TV screen. Then he looked back at Mercutio's face, raised his hand to brush the hair off his forehead, swipe some of the dirt off his cheek. The nun continued to work, and Benvolio felt every passing second, every one of Mercutio's shallow breaths, like a throttle on his heart.

The wound was finally covered with something taped to the skin, and the nun took Mercutio's pulse again. She nodded once more.

"Will he…" Benvolio whispered, still watching Mercutio's face.

"I don't know," the nun replied quietly, "but I've done what I can and now it's up to his body's healing. You brought him to the right place."

Benvolio nodded a little, eyes still burning, hardly listening. Luck. A miracle. Someone listening. 

"What about you, sweetie?" the nun asked, reaching for him now. "All the blood on you…"

He looked up at her distantly, not even sure what she meant. Finally, he looked down at his hands. They were covered in blood that was drying into the lines of his palms, running down his wrists. It was smeared on his clothes, which were also scuffed with dust from the road. He looked at it, flexed his hand.

"It's all…" he finally managed, "the blood is…"

He looked at Mercutio again and dissolved into tears once more, harder this time, like his whole body was shattering in on itself. He wasn’t sure what was happening to him, what he was feeling.

"Oh, oh, ok," the nun was saying in a soothing voice, rubbing his arm, "try to take some deep breaths."

Benvolio tried and pressed at his stinging eyes, body shaking. 

"We'll get him over to the clinic now," the nun said, resting a hand on his shoulder. "Let's get you and your friend there to rest, ok?"

Someone else was there, helping lift Benvolio back to his feet, and then more people were lifting Mercutio as well. Benvolio stood up, watching as two people carried Mercutio carefully away, but he found his legs wouldn't carry him. His mind lurched, and he looked back at the door.

"My cousin," he said dully, remembering, "my cousin's still out there."

"Is he hurt too?" the nun said, forehead knitting with concern.

"I don't know," Benvolio said and stumbled forward, laying his hands on the main door. “I’ll... I have to find him.”

He pushed forward, shoving out into the bright light of day. Could it still be day? It seemed like years had passed. Still, he stepped into the street and kept his feet moving forward, remembering Romeo, remembering Tybalt. Everything passed before his eyes like a blur. 

He kept moving forward, although it felt like sleepwalking, until someone shouted his name and crashed into him. Then there were arms around his neck and a familiar voice crying into his shoulder.

"Oh god, Benvolio, I'm so sorry," Romeo sobbed, clinging to him, and Benvolio let out a breath and hugged him back. 

He was ok. He was alive. He was the same. Benvolio managed a deeper breath and hugged him harder.

Romeo drew back after a moment and looked at him with horror.

"Are you ok? God, the blood…" He touched his face, his shoulders, took his hands and stared at the bloody palms. 

"I'm ok," Benvolio replied finally. He looked at his hands too. "It's not… none of it's mine."

Romeo stared at him, face going pale. "Oh god, is this… that means it's all…"

Then he was clutching Benvolio around the chest and clinging to him like a child, like when they'd been nine and six and Romeo had been chased by a mean dog and clung to Benvolio and cried until their parents had come to pick them up from the park. Benvolio had protected him then, from the dog should it come back, from the people poking at him for crying, and he did now too, letting his arms curl around his cousin and hold him to his chest.

“What happened?” he asked finally, feeling Romeo shake against him.

"After…" Romeo whispered, "after Mercutio, what Tybalt did…" His voice came out broken. "When he came back, I just… I just lost it. I couldn't stand it, that he'd killed my friend--"

Benvolio tried to say something, but Romeo was still talking, clutching at him harder.

"I killed him, Benvolio," he said, weeping again. "I just lost it and I killed him…” He shook. “I killed him and now… now…”

Benvolio had gone strangely cold. "And now?" he prompted, with what strength he could still muster inside.

"Now I… I don't know what to do!" Romeo replied, weeping again. "The prince… but I just couldn't, I can’t--and now… Juliet, how will I ever see her again? How can we ever be together? How--" 

Then whatever else he might have been trying to say was drowned in heavy sobs again, his fingers digging into Benvolio's clothes.

"Juliet," Benvolio echoed, so exhausted, too exhausted, but knowing that name was familiar somehow. "Oh god, Romeo, Juliet _Capulet_?"

Romeo nodded against his chest, face buried in the fabric there.

"Oh god…" Benvolio said, leaning his head as much as he could against his cousins. "Romeo…"

"I love her so much," Romeo said, "I love her more than heaven and earth and I can't--I don't--how can I--" 

Benvolio forced himself to take one low breath. 

"Ok," he said almost sharply, pulling Romeo back to face him. "Enough."

Romeo stared at him in surprise, tears still on his cheeks.

"Stuff’s happened. Bad things have happened but this won't help!" Benvolio snapped, too tired for gentleness. "So stop with this bullshit--this goddamn--" He was losing his grip, worn too thin. He took a breath, still holding a shocked and slightly frightened looking Romeo out before him. "If you really love this girl so much, then you can figure something out. Just…" He took a breath. "For god's sake, Romeo, you at least can't stay here just roaming in the streets waiting to be caught." He shook his head. "We know what the prince said about the feud and fighting and so…" He took another shaking breath, holding back his own tears now. "You gotta get out of here. You have to go."

Romeo ran a hand up his arm a bit like he was petting a nervous animal. His face was distant, his eyes red. He met Benvolio’s eyes again.

"Ok," he answered slowly, biting his lip and tightening his shoulders, "You're--you're right."

"Of course I'm right," Benvolio said with whatever authority he could still muster, which wasn't much. Still, his duty, his self-- _good-will_ , _peace maker_ \--ran through him, and he held firm to Romeo's shoulders. "Get out of here for now and then we'll figure it out, ok? We always figure it out." He gave his shoulders a squeeze and tried for a face that was reassuring but he was sure missed the mark. "I'll help you however I can. I always do."

Romeo stared at him for what felt a long moment and then pulled him into another tight hug. 

"Thank you," he said into his shoulder.

Then, before Benvolio could say anything back, Romeo was gone, running back down the street like he had been before he'd hit Benvolio. For his part, Benvolio only lingered a moment longer, enough to look down again at the blood on his hands, before he turned and headed back toward the church.

Chapter 8 

Benvolio found his way to the clinic, which from looking at signs was some sort of free facility to help those in need. He walked around, still blood covered and getting frightened looks, until someone directed him to the room they'd put Mercutio in. 

The nun who'd stitched him up was there when Benvolio opened the door, and she surveyed him with a worried eye.

"Your cousin?" she asked.

Benvolio shook his head. "He's ok, mostly. He's gone. I…"

The nun circled around the bed where Mercutio lay, shirt removed and body tucked up under white sheets, and she put an arm of support around Benvolio. She led him, somewhat against his will, to a small bathroom and told him to wash before shutting the door. He followed directions, scrubbing hard at the dried blood and trying not to think about anything. Not Mercutio, quiet in that bed. Not Romeo, fleeing from danger. Not Tybalt, dead in the street. He scrubbed harder at his hands, as if he could somehow wash the whole day away with the blood and grime.

He looked up at his face in the little mirror above the sink, his eyes bloodshot and glassy, his face still streaked with dirt and blood and the tracks of tears.

He scrubbed at all that too.

When he finally emerged, the nun was still there waiting patiently. She gave a nod and a slightly relieved smile at his appearance and then led him back to Mercutio's room.

There was a chair by the bed that Benvolio slumped into immediately, bone weary as he looked at Mercutio's pale face.

"Is he gonna be ok?" he asked, looking up at the nun.

"We can only hope," she said. "Now… can I get a little information?"

Benvolio nodded and looked back down at Mercutio, laying there too quiet and too still to really be him. He told the nun both their names, what had happened with Tybalt and Mercutio, the little Romeo had told him about what happened after. He didn't tell her that Romeo was running, but that hardly seemed to matter. He reached for Mercutio's hand that was nearest him and clasped it gently between both his own. He didn't even notice when the nun left except for the soft click of the door behind her.

The room was small and grey and smelled like bleach and lemon cleaner. Benvolio pulled the chair closer to the bed, close enough that he could lean forward and rest his forehead against his own folded hands that held Mercutio's. It was too quiet, so quiet Benvolio could hear the blood throbbing in his ears.

Had it just been this morning, when things were so good, so easy, just a new version of constantly laughing and joking and being together?

"Come on," he whispered into the silence, because he didn't know what else to say to this too quiet, too calm Mercutio. He looked at him, pressing further into his forehead with their joined hands. "Please don't die. Not now. Not when we finally…"

He squeezed his eyes shut again, felt the way his teeth bit together but couldn't stop them. Everything ached except the hands that held Mercutio. Those he kept gentle, focused on the warmth there.

It had only been hours before that those hands had touched him, had made flourishes as he joked, had held on to him. Benvolio took a shaking breath, just holding that hand, unable to stop remembering, picturing it: the stars, their hands together, Mercutio's lips, his laughing eyes, the tenderness of him this morning, the ferocity when Tybalt had pushed Benvolio aside. Those hands, the constant, exuberant noise of him, that beaming smile out under the sun, those lips against his jaw and his whispers against Benvolio’s skin. It all surged inside him like those stars from last night had taken up residence in his chest, were burning a new constellation there that made his heart ache and his breath catch and his mind forget all reason. It was a consuming, longing need for Mercurio to be ok, to look at and touch him again, for them to have one more chance to actually be together like they were supposed to be, the way they'd been dancing around for years, to be able to tell him...

Benvolio recognized his own thoughts and almost laughed.

He was ass over teakettle. He'd finally succumbed. 

If this was how Romeo felt every time, well, then Benvolio should have been much more sympathetic because it did feel all-encompassing, like life and death eating away inside him all at once.

Benvolio looked down at Mercutio again, at the steady rise and fall of his chest, and thought of the night of the Capulet ball, thought of all the days and evenings of laughing and touching and never questioning. Of course he was comfortable around Mercutio. Of course he didn't mind his touches. Of course he oriented after him like a sunflower.

"I'm an idiot," Benvolio said to the sleeping form before him, rubbing at his eyes with his joined hands. "God, I've been ass over teakettle for a while…” He made a noise like a sad laugh, still aching inside. “I just fell into it so naturally I didn't even realize." He shook his head. "You gotta wake up so I can tell you, and I'll give you full permission to laugh at and mock me about it forever. Just…" He pressed a hesitant kiss to the tops of Mercutio's fingers. "Just please wake up…"

Mercutio didn't answer, but at least he continued to breathe, slow and quiet as waves far away.

Benvolio didn't even realize he'd fallen asleep until someone was shaking his shoulder and rousing him. He'd flopped against the side of the chair, Mercutio's hand still clutched in his, and he blinked up at the nun who was touching him. It wasn't the same one as before, although it was hard to tell the difference.

"Mr. Montague?" she asked.

"Yes," he said, rubbing his face and laying Mercutio's hand back down beside him. "How is he?"

The nun looked startled but went and checked the chart at the end of the bed.

"He's holding stable," she read. "Just on some medication to fight any possible inflammation or infection. But Mr. Montague--"

"Benvolio," he supplied, finally looking up at her again, and she nodded.

"Benvolio," she corrected, "your family’s been looking for you since what happened with Mr. Romeo, and I really think you should go home and get some real rest for a while."

Benvolio looked back at Mercutio's sleeping form.

"He's in good hands," the nun added, "and you can come visit him again in the morning."

Benvolio glanced back up in surprise. "In the morning? What time is it now?"

"Almost 5pm," the nun replied. "You slept through most of the day."

Benvolio blinked at her and looked over at the little window.

"Well, I did sleep in a field last night," he said with a tick of wry humor, "so I guess that makes sense." 

The nun's face twitched with surprise, but she said nothing.

"Romeo," he asked her, worry coming back to him, "did anything--what happened to him?"

The nun's lips thinned, as if hesitating, and she didn’t respond. Benvolio shook his head and pushed himself to standing. It didn't matter. He'd know soon enough. For the moment, he just looked back down at Mercutio. The nurse was still there, still waiting for him and watching him, but he found he didn't care.

He bent and kissed Mercutio's forehead, lingering just over his face.

“I’ll be back soon,” he whispered, brushing his fingertips through Mercutio’s hair. “Don’t go anywhere, ok?” 

He looked back at the nun, who’d looked away for a moment, but now nodded at him. He followed her from the room. 

He didn't entirely know how he got home, but as soon as he opened the door, he was hit with a flood of noise. It seemed like most of the Montague family was packed into the front room, and Benvolio's mother, already in tears, threw herself upon him as soon as he stepped inside.

"My baby!" she cried, squeezing him tight. "With Romeo, and the fight--I was so worried about you! You are ok, aren’t you? Oh sweetheart, are you--”

"I'm ok," he replied, patting her back. "I'm really ok."

"But a dead Capulet… a cousin of the prince dead…" said Romeo's father from the other side of the room, which was greeted with mutters of nervous voices from the many other aunts, uncles, and cousins around the room, "it'll be a war… or the end of both the Montagues and the Capulets." 

More agreement, more concerned this time, as people wrung their hands and looked at each other.

Benvolio opened his mouth to explain that Mercutio wasn't actually dead but stopped himself. They'd already continued talking anyway, and really, why should they know? Maybe seeing the consequences of their idiot feud would actually spur them to change. So he kept his mouth shut and simply listened as they all grumbled and worried and repeated themselves and speculated on the future. He watched it all from a strange distance.

"What about Romeo?" Benvolio finally asked, since he clearly wasn't there but also had barely been mentioned.

Romeo's father glowered at him disapprovingly. "You haven't heard? Where have you been?"

"No, I haven’t heard," he replied shortly. "My best friend just died, so I've been preoccupied." 

Just saying it, even knowing it (hopefully) wasn't true, twisted up his gut, and the Montague patriarch looked slightly scandalized by Benvolio's words. It was only then he realized the bitterness that had come through in his voice, the bite of his words. He didn't talk like that, didn't mouth off and argue. He was Benvolio, the good one, the quiet one, the one who looked after the more volatile Romeo. He wasn't meant to be volatile himself.

God, he was tired of his assigned role. 

His mom was rubbing his back gently and chewing at her lower lip as she looked out at the room.

"Romeo's been banished," Benvolio’s father finally answered from beside Romeo’s, "banned from returning to Verona."

Benvolio blinked, considering that, but actually a bit relieved. It could have been worse, much worse. As he thought about it, there was more muttering, a few angry cries against the prince, against the Capulets, the unfairness and injustice of it all.

"Injustice?" Benvolio said before he could stop himself. "How? He's banished rather than killed! That seems pretty kind to me after what the prince said before about fighting because of the damn feud!"

More people around the room stared at him in surprise, a few with gaping mouths, and the room went strangely quiet. Even Romeo's father had gone silent in shock, and it was strangely gratifying. 

"Maybe…" his mom said quietly, "maybe you should go get some rest now." She patted his back. "We can talk about this all later."

"Where's Romeo now?" Benvolio asked instead of listening. "Did he already leave?"

No one answered for a moment as Benvolio looked around at them, face probably still lined with irritation that he couldn't conceal. All these familiar faces, all those similar features, shared movements and expressions, all looking nervous now, wary of him like he’d come in as an animal instead of himself.

"With Friar Lawrence, I think," one of the other cousins finally replied as he looked at her. "He has to be out of Verona before morning, though, according to the prince's ruling."

"Thanks," Benvolio said, nodding to her, and she gave him a cautious smile.

Without another word, he worked his way through the cluster of family and to his own room. He shut the door behind him and leaned against it, forcing himself to take a deep breath. So much for Benvolio the peacemaker, but he was too tired to really care. He pushed off from the door, threw off his still dirty and somewhat bloodstained clothes, and set an alarm to wake him up in two hours. Just a couple hours of good sleep and he'd go after Romeo, be sure he wasn't doing something stupid, was being safe. At some point he'd have to unpack the whole "in love with a Capulet," thing, but for the moment, Benvolio could only focus on his bed. He dropped himself into it and mashed his face into the pillow, desperate for his brain to quiet, to leave him be for just a little while.

This time, it obliged.

Chapter 9 

Benvolio knocked harder on Friar Lawrence’s door the second time, unsure what exactly his plan was if the friar wasn’t actually here, or if Romeo had already gone.

Honestly, he didn’t really have a plan if Romeo was here either. He had only that instinct that said to keep track of his cousin and his Romeo-senses telling him something bad was definitely going to happen if Benvolio did nothing.

The door finally cracked open, an older man’s face visible between door and frame.

“Can I help you?” the friar asked, squinting at him.

“Yes--hopefully,” Benvolio said. “I’m looking for Romeo Montague.”

“Oh…” the friar said, eyes darting for a second, “I’m afraid he’s not here right now. He’s--”

“Benvolio?”

“That’s him,” Benvolio said, already tired again, motioning toward the voice emerging muffled but audible from behind the friar. “I’m his cousin.”

The friar still hesitated but finally let Benvolio in and shut the door quickly behind him. The interior of the chamber was dim since evening was coming on outside, but Romeo’s form thrown sobbing on the floor was still apparent. Benvolio allowed himself a long sigh and approached, kneeling down beside him.

Romeo squinted up at him, eyes red and watery. “Benvolio?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” Benvolio said, patting his back a few times as Romeo buried his face in his hands again. “You’re looking about as good as I feel.”

Romeo scowled at him from between his hands. “How can you say that? You can’t possibly understand how it feels to be sentenced to a fate worse than death… to be more treated worse than even the stupidest animal that can at least look at Juliet while I can’t.” He cried again, covering his face. “A _fly_ can at least land on her hand, see her face, and I _can’t_! The prince should have just killed me instead! It would’ve been more merciful...”

Benvolio strangled down an immediate urge to smack his cousin repeatedly on the back of the head until he shut up for half a second, but instead just patted his back again and looked up at the friar.

“So, he’s doing well,” Benvolio said tiredly, and the friar grunted.

“He’s been carrying on like this for an _hour_ ,” he replied. “I’ve tried telling him it’s not the end of the world, that banishment isn’t so bad, that something can still be done--”

“You can both say that because you don’t know how I _feel_ ,” Romeo cried. “You’ve never loved like this, never felt the crippling pain of marrying your true love only for death and banishment to ruin everything immediately.” He covered his face again. “If you knew how it felt to love like this, you’d throw yourself on the ground and sob too, you heartless...”

Benvolio took a deep breath and shifted to lay down on his back next to Romeo’s still prone and shaking form. He folded his arms under his head and looked up at the beams of the ceiling, the shadows cast by the lights and candles, and waited for Romeo to quiet again. When he finally seemed to have composed himself a little more, Benvolio tipped his head to look at him.

Romeo peeked at him over his hands, one visible eye still watery and narrowed with pain.

“You do realize,” Benvolio said quietly, stifling the nerve in his stomach and deciding that, with everything going on, maybe continuing the lie would keep everyone safer, “that I lost Mercutio today, right?”

Romeo’s visible eye shut tight, crying again.

“I know…” he muttered into his hands, “and it was my fault and--”

“That’s not why I’m telling you this,” Benvolio said quickly, “because it wasn’t your fault, and no one blames you for what Tybalt did.”

“Mercutio did!” Romeo protested, covering his face and crying again.

Well, he was in it now. Benvolio took a deep breath. “Not at the end,” he said. “He knew it wasn’t your fault.”

Romeo peeked at him again. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Benvolio said, “but I’m telling you this because…” He swallowed and looked back up at the ceiling, steeling himself, “because I understand how you’re feeling, losing someone.”

Romeo shook his head, even with it buried in his hands. “You can’t understand.” He squinted at Benvolio again. “It’s not the same, losing a friend compared to losing--”

Benvolio shot him a meaningful look, and Romeo went quiet.

“Oh,” he said after a moment, and then shifted to prop himself up a little on his elbows and look at Benvolio. “ _Oh._ ”

Benvolio simply nodded and looked back at the ceiling, gut twisting. “Yeah.”

“Oh,” Romeo said again, rubbing his hands over his face, not quite looking at Benvolio now.

“Yeah.”

“God, I’m…” Romeo began, scrubbing at his eyes. “I’m… I’m so sorry. I never… I didn’t know--” He rubbed his face again. "So you two were…?"

“It was new,” Benvolio replied, throat tight. "We…"

His chest clenched, remembering the stars again, but then he just saw bleeding Mercutio, the way his eyes fluttered shut and his face went pale. He reminded himself quickly, squeezing his eyes shut, that Mercutio was being taken care of, that he wasn’t really dead. There was still a chance. For him. For them.

“It took me a while to figure it out,” Benvolio offered finally as he opened his eyes again, because that at least was true. “So what I’m trying to say is… you and this girl--wait,” his head snapped to look at Romeo again, “did you say you got _married_?”

Romeo kept his chin raised. “We love each other."

“Sure,” Benvolio said, because he couldn’t possibly unpack all that right now. “Fine. Well, what I’m saying is you and her, you’ve still got a chance. She could leave with you. Maybe the feud will end and you can be together here. Something…” He rolled to his side, staring hard at his cousin. “What I’m _saying_ is that you’re both still alive, so start acting like it.”

Romeo blinked at him once, actually looking just a little chagrined. He rubbed his eyes and nodded finally. “Maybe… maybe you’re right.”

“Thank the Good Lord,” the friar grunted from behind them, and Benvolio actually had to smile.

He rocked up to sitting and looked back at his cousin. Romeo pushed himself to sitting too and looked about to say something when there was another knock on the door.

Friar Lawrence looked quickly at Romeo and then over to Benvolio. “Hide him,” he commanded quietly, nodding back to Romeo, “just in case,” and then hurried toward the door.

Benvolio stood and dragged Romeo with him, positioning him behind him as he faced the door. 

The large woman from before in the square entered now, looking as flustered as she had the last time. She looked in surprise at Benvolio, and then to Romeo, who emerged immediately from behind him.

“Nurse!” he said, running to her and clutching her hands. “How’s Juliet? Is she ok? Does she hate me now? Does she think I ruined our love?”

Benvolio sighed and rubbed his temples. He only half-listened as the nurse talked about Juliet and Romeo kept asking inane and tearful questions. He swayed on his feet, feeling strangely empty. The friar came up beside him and touched his arm.

“Are you alright?” he said, eyebrows crinkling with concern. He looked him over again. “Have you eaten anything recently?”

Benvolio allowed himself a hollow laugh. “Actually, no… that’d probably explain it.”

The friar patted his arm. “You did a good thing here, taking care of your cousin,” the friar said, leading Benvolio over to a chair.

Apparently today he was just going to be led around by clergy, Benvolio noted dimly, but he still felt glad to have the seat. He finally recognized the hollow ache in his stomach.

What a strange and terrible day. And it had started so well.

“I’m sorry,” the friar said, as he came back with a glass of water, “about your… friend.”

Benvolio looked up at him. “Yeah,” he said after a moment, accepting the glass. He looked back over at Romeo, who was still in hurried conversation with the nurse. “But between you and me,” Benvolio said, dropping his voice lower, “Mercutio’s still alive--as far as I know. At St. Michael’s clinic.”

Friar Lawrence blinked at him in surprise, and then looked at Romeo also. “Why wouldn’t you tell him?”

“Because I’m sick of the feud!” Benvolio hissed. “And it seems like bloodshed’s the only thing that’s gonna make anybody give a damn--excuse me, father,” he added quickly.

The friar waved him off. “Well… your lie did at least get Romeo up off the floor…”

Benvolio took a drink of water and shook his head. “I don’t think he’d see sense without theatrics.”

The friar sighed. “I can’t disagree with you there.”

“Besides--” Benvolio began, but then Romeo was there again.

“Friar, I--I have to leave in the morning, but you’ll keep me updated, right?” He looked at him desperately, eyes still bright. “About my situation? If anything changes? If there’s a solution so I can come back?”

“Of course,” Friar Lawrence replied, taking Romeo’s hand. “Just have faith and have patience and don’t do anything rash.”

“Can I second that?” Benvolio said, raising his glass briefly.

Romeo looked down at him and then threw his arms around his neck in a hug. Benvolio used his free hand to hug back.

“Thank you for coming, Benvolio,” he said and let him go. “Really, you’ve always been like a brother to me, and I…” He hesitated before laying a hand on Benvolio’s shoulder. “I really am sorry about Mercutio.”

Guilt bit at Benvolio’s stomach, but he pushed it down. There’d be time to explain everything later, when Mercutio was truly recovered, and when everything had quieted down in the city again. So he said nothing and simply nodded at Romeo before his cousin turned and followed the nurse out into the night. 

"Will you keep me updated too?" Benvolio asked the friar after a moment. "If you hear anything from Romeo I might need to know? I wanna believe he'd talk to me, but…"

Friar Lawrence nodded, looking rather tired, and took down Benvolio's number.

Chapter 10 

A good portion of the next day passed in a kind of strange blur. Benvolio spent far more time than he would have liked surrounded by his family, who were still all frantic about Romeo’s banishment and how the Capulets might retaliate further for Tybalt and if the prince would do something more about the feud. Benvolio found himself frequently foisted off with younger cousins and nieces and nephews who needed a caretaker while the adults went and talked to people in charge of the city or did whatever other important “adult” things needed to be done. 

“Why not just name me _Bambinaio_ if that’s what they actually wanted?” he grumbled to his three-year-old niece, who just giggled at him as he carried her around on his hip. He couldn’t help but smile at her too, even as he wandered through the house making sure none of the other kids were getting into trouble while they were supposed to be playing or coloring.

“Or maybe _Custode_ ?” he said, wrinkling his nose down at her. “Or just cut right through and go with _Sheepdog_?”

The little girl laughed again.

“That’s what my friend calls me sometimes,” he told her with another grin, even at the lurch he got when remembering Mercutio, “because all I do is chase all you little sheep around.” He gave a little bark at her, which just made her laugh harder.

“You’re silly, Uncle Benny,” she muttered, wrapping her hands tighter in his shirt.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “My friend thinks so too.”

He hadn’t had a chance to get over to see Mercutio again yet, which kept a knot of anxiety in his stomach, but he had to tell himself that the clinic would have called if something bad had happened. He had to be ok, just recovering, maybe still sedated.

Something must have shown in his face, because his niece pulled at his shirt. “Wha’s wrong? Why’re you sad?”

He shook his head and sent her another smile. “I’m fine,” he said to her. “I’m just worried about my friend.”

“Sheepdog friend?” she asked, which made Benvolio laugh.

“Oh, he’d love that,” he replied. “Yeah, sheepdog friend. His name’s Mercutio--like the planet Mercury. It fits him too,” he said, jostling her against his hip again and smiling at her wide, fascinated eyes, “Mercury - fast, wild, unpredictable.” He let out a sigh and took another lap around the house while his niece giggled and clung around his waist. “I just hope he’s ok.”

“He’ll be ok, Uncle Benny,” she said with the security only a small child could muster, and he smiled at her again and kissed her forehead.

Benvolio finally made it to the clinic around mid afternoon, probably looking a bit frantic and insane again. He asked immediately about Mercutio and was told he was doing fine, still sleeping and resting a lot, but healing well.

“He asked about you right away when he first woke up,” one nun said as she walked him to Mercutio’s room, giving Benvolio a pleasant smile. “He may be out again, though. He lost quite a bit of blood and we've kept him on some pretty strong medications.”

Benvolio nodded and pushed open the door to Mercutio’s room.

He did look like he was sleeping again, but he also looked more like himself. He didn’t look nearly so pale, and his sleep this time looked natural and restful. The room was still cool and sterile, but buttery sunlight dappled the tile floor and Mercutio's still body, warming it considerably. Benvolio immediately took the chair beside him, sinking into it and staring down at the man in the bed.

“Heard you were asking about me,” he said lightly to the sleeping form, mouth quirking into a smile. “Coming off a little needy, Merc.”

Mercutio didn’t reply, but Benvolio didn’t really mind. He was still here, still alive. For the horror of yesterday, normalcy was slowly returning. Romeo had left as far as he knew, and there hadn’t been any word from him, which with Romeo fell under the "no news was good news" category. The prince hadn’t said anything else about the feud, and from what Benvolio had seen, there hadn’t been any more fighting.

Hopefully the worst of it was over.

Benvolio took a deep breath and gently picked up Mercutio’s hand again, holding it between his own.

“Sorry I couldn’t get here sooner,” he said, rubbing a thumb over Mercutio’s knuckles. “I, of course, got stuck on babysitter duty--although,” he added with a grin, “plying kids with goldfish crackers and mac ‘n cheese did force me to eat something today too.” He shook his head, looking at Mercutio’s hand between his, the lines of the skin, the smooth, well-kept nails. He rested his forehead against their joined hands and shut his eyes. “God, yesterday made for a hell of a first date, huh?"

“Not exactly,” came a murmur from the bed, “the first date I would’ve planned.”

Benvolio looked back up to see Mercutio watching him with tired eyes and a lopsided smile. Relief poured through Benvolio as he squeezed the other man’s hand.

“Yeah?” he asked, a smile breaking over his face. “What exactly would you have done differently then?”

Mercutio smiled too and shifted to try to push himself up further in bed. He winced. “A movie, maybe dancing, lots of flirting and conversation. Probably feel you up in the back of a cab." He smirked as Benvolio grunted a laugh and rolled his eyes. "Less stabbing, too,” he said, “or a different kind of stabbing at least.”

Benvolio laughed. “God I’m glad you’re being an inappropriate ass again,” he said. “Quiet you’s unsettling.”

Mercutio grimaced as he finally got to sitting, revealing the basic hospital gown he'd been put into. "Damn this is unflattering," he muttered, looking over at Benvolio again. "I also would have definitely ended our date with better, and then probably less, clothes."

"You're ridiculous," Benvolio replied, still smiling.

He didn't know what else to say, could only fill his eyes with the sight of him: moving, talking, joking like himself. Those burning stars were in his chest again, aching there like his rib cage was too small to contain then. He leaned forward, reaching for Mercutio's cheek slowly, allowing him time to say something, move away.

Maybe something had changed. Maybe that morning had been a fluke. Maybe Mercutio had changed his mind, realized he didn't really want Benvolio in that way.

Mercutio, of course, just smiled until Benvolio fit his mouth against his, cradling his face in his hand. It wasn't different after all, it seemed. Mercutio raised a hand, sweeping it up to the back of Benvolio's head, fingers moving into his hair. The way they fit together… it didn't make sense to Benvolio at all. It was easy and natural like it never was with anyone else, as if they'd done it forever.

Although he supposed, in a way, they had.

He drew back but refused to let go of Mercutio's cheek as he rested his forehead against his.

"Don't you dare scare me like that again," Benvolio murmured.

Mercutio chuckled. "I'll try not to."

"Really, though," Benvolio said, glaring at him with only partially faked fire, "you start a random street fight like that again, I'll stab you myself."

"Fair enough," Mercutio replied, smiling again, and then pulled his head back down to kiss him swiftly again before adding, "Granted, I'll take whatever kind of _stabbing_ you'll give me, big boy."

Benvolio laughed. "Go fuck yourself, Merc," he said fondly, and kissed him again anyway.

"Fuck me yourself, you coward," Mercutio replied, voice was a low rumble through his smirk, and damn, if Benvolio didn't want to take him up on that offer. 

He did kiss him again then, longer than he meant to, and probably longer than he should have because eventually Mercutio winced again and sat back. Benvolio drew back immediately and looked down at him, worry returning to his face.

"You ok?"

"Just the stitches," Mercutio replied. He leaned forward again, reaching for Benvolio's face, tongue sliding along his lower lip. "It's fine--come back."

"Oh no," Benvolio replied, finding his chair again. "We're not risking those stitches."

"Party pooper," Mercutio replied, settling back as well and crossing his arms over his chest. "Fine, so what did I miss while I was sleeping with nuns in the least fun way possible?"

He asked it with a grin, but at Benvolio's suddenly sober face, the grin faded. He squeezed Benvolio's hand. "Oh god, what did I miss?"

Benvolio shook his head. "You don't need to worry about it now." He managed a smile that was only a little forced. "We can talk about it when you're better."

"I'm better enough," Mercutio said immediately, face going serious.

"Really, it's--"

"Tell me."

Benvolio stared at him for a long moment. "God you're stubborn."

"And you're being cagey and it's freaking me out," Mercutio responded.

Benvolio sighed and rubbed his forehead. "Fine." 

Then he told him about Tybalt, about Romeo, about Juliet, about the banishment and the tension of the feud. He tried to be fair, unbiased, keep his voice steady. As he drew to the end, he rubbed the back of his neck.

"Oh," he finished, going a bit red, "and everyone thinks you're dead."

" _What?_ "

"I wanted you to be safe!" Benvolio replied desperately. "And I wanted people to see how stupid and terrible the feud was!"

Mercutio was still watching him with a slightly unreadable expression, and Benvolio's stomach dropped.

"Are you… mad?" he asked. "Because I knew it was stupid but I just…"

Mercutio continued to stare for a moment, face frozen in shock, and then started to laugh. It was soft at first, but it grew in intensity until he had to stop himself and hold his side for a moment. He rubbed his eyes, and Benvolio risked a smile.

"Do I get to make a miraculous reappearance?" Mercutio asked, laughing again. "How many Jesus jokes do you think I'm allowed before I get sent to hell? Oh my god!" he exclaimed, face alighting on something new. "Can I _haunt_ people? How long do you think I could keep it up?"

Benvolio put his face in his hands, wondering why he'd ever thought someone like Mercutio would be upset by an opportunity for melodrama. He shook his head, fighting another smile.

"So you're not mad?" he asked finally.

"Nah," Mercutio said, although his face did go a little more serious as he added, "but I do think I should tell my family the truth. They've at least got to be wondering where my corpse ran off to."

Benvolio nodded, grinning again. "That seems fair."

Mercutio rubbed his face, remaining a bit more serious. "But shit, the other stuff? That's…" He shook his head. "Poor, stupid Romeo."

Benvolio could only nod and run his hands backwards through his hair.

"It's weird without him here, just knowing he's off alone with some family friends, probably crying on a floor again," he said after a moment, hands on the back of his neck. "How'm I supposed to keep track of him now?"

Mercutio chewed at his lower lip. "You could have... gone with him," he offered after a moment. "Looked out for him in Mantua instead of staying here."

Benvolio met his eyes again, feeling the truthful burn of the words even before they left his mouth. "I couldn't have left Verona." He swallowed. "Not now."

Mercutio met his eyes, the apples of his cheeks going just a little pink.

"Ben," he said, fingers tapping against his legs, "I'm not… I'm not very good at emotions--"

Benvolio snorted. "Bullshit."

"Sex isn't an emotion," Mercutio corrected, the corner of his lips lifting, "and neither are being funny or amazing, all of which I'm, admittedly, great at, but--"

"You don't have to say anything," Benvolio said, shaking his head. "I get it, Merc. I do. You and me," he gestured between them, "it just... works, somehow."

Mercutio smiled, face going tender again. "Yeah. It kinda does, doesn't it? But still…" he wet his lips again, "I'm pretty sure you saved my life yesterday, and I can never repay you for that."

Benvolio waved him off and sat back in his chair. "You would've done the same for me."

Mercutio measured him with a look and then shook his head. "I don't know, Ben. You're something different, made of better stuff than the rest of us."

"You're just saying that because of the drugs they've got you on," Benvolio said with a laugh, and Mercutio joined him.

"They are pretty good drugs," he replied with a grin. "Wait until you try the jello."

Benvolio spent the rest of the day at the clinic talking, laughing, eating pretty bad food, and being grateful Mercutio was alive. He did get word from his parents that they'd heard from Romeo, that he was safe and ok in Mantua, and so Benvolio allowed himself the opportunity to relax for once. The people he cared about were taken care of.

By evening, Mercutio was eager to be out of the clinic and somewhat rudely told the nuns so. Benvolio apologized on his behalf, sent Mercutio a sharp look, and turned back to the nun.

She was the original one who'd stitched him, and she crossed her arms sternly and definitely didn't look like someone to be intimidated, especially not by Mercutio’s antics.

"One more night," she said, "where you're under observation. Then, if you're healed enough, we can discharge you in the morning."

Mercutio looked about to say something that no one should say to a nun, so Benvolio cut in with a gesture.

"Sounds great," he said. "No arguments here. We wouldn't want to do anything," he shot the last bit at Mercutio, "that might endanger his health again."

Mercutio grumbled something but sat back in the bed, arms crossed. The nun gave then both one last, terse nod, and then left the room.

"I'm not an invalid," Mercutio muttered, frowning.

"Of course not," Benvolio replied, moving back in front of him and sweeping the hair from his face, "you were just stabbed yesterday, dumbass." He pressed a light kiss to his forehead.

Mercutio grunted but didn't say anything else for a while, still looking stubborn and surly. Luckily, “surly” wasn’t typically his nature, so it didn’t last long while Benvolio was still there. He managed to bribe him into a better mood with some of the aforementioned jello and some bad TV that they watched and mocked until they both started to yawn. Benvolio rubbed a hand through his hair and looked out the little window at the dark that had come on outside, and he finally stood.

"I guess I should probably go," he said, rolling his tight shoulders. "We both need to sleep."

Mercutio frowned a little but motioned him closer. Benvolio rolled his eyes but bent down, expecting teasing, inappropriate jokes, or maybe a kiss before he left. 

Instead, Mercutio caught the front of Benvolio's shirt in his fist and pulled his face even closer, a smirk tugging at his lips. He raised an eyebrow.

"Or you could stay here tonight," he murmured, looking up at Benvolio through soft lashes.

"What, just crawl up in that twin hospital bed with you while the nuns come in to check your vitals every couple hours?" Benvolio replied, although he didn't untangle himself from Mercutio's grip.

Mercutio grunted again and loosed his grip a little. "Yeah, I guess that's fair." He lay his hand flat on Benvolio's chest and slid it slowly up to cup his cheek instead. "Then how about tomorrow night, when I'm back home and we won't be disturbed by anyone, especially not nuns?"

Benvolio flushed as he grinned, stomach twisting. "Yeah, maybe," he teased, pushing down his nerves, "if they actually discharge you. And,” he added with his own smirk, “if you make it worth my while."

Mercutio smiled and pulled his face near. "Oh trust me," he purred, making Benvolio's body go a bit hot, "I will."

"Then you better heal well tonight," Benvolio replied, trying not to reveal how easily Mercutio affected him, "because I'm not easily impressed."

Mercutio pulled him even closer and nipped at his bottom lip. "We'll see about that."

Benvolio chuckled, hoping it hid the flush on his face that was almost inevitably traveling down more of his body. He pressed a somewhat chaste kiss to Mercutio’s mouth and drew back.

"Get some sleep," he said. "I'll be back as soon as I can tomorrow and we'll see if you get discharged. Then we'll talk."

Mercutio stared at him, eyes hooded. "God I wish I hadn't gotten stabbed."

Benvolio just laughed. "Me too. So remember that next time you do something violent and impulsive." 

He moved to the door and lay his hand on the handle.

"Hey," Mercutio said, drawing his attention back. His face was soft, almost a bit nervous. "I'd do it again, though," he said, "if someone hurt or threatened you like Tybalt did."

Benvolio blinked at him. "Really?” He didn’t want to look at the feeling inside himself, at that sweet look in Mercutio’s eyes. “But… why?"

Mercutio gave him an indulgent sort of smile, like Benvolio was missing something incredibly obvious and being pretty stupid overall.

"Because it's you," he said finally, cracking a smile. He settled back into the bed and then made a shooing motion toward the door. "Now leave me alone to dream about an army of sluttier, bendier yous to get myself through the night."

Benvolio smiled and shook his head. "Good night, Merc."

He gave another fond smile. "Good night, Ben.”

Benvolio pushed through the door but hesitated, lingering in the doorway, something prickling at his skin. He finally looked back in at Mercutio tucked back into the folds of the white bed.

"I'd do it for you too, you know," he murmured after a moment.

Mercutio smiled and shut his eyes. "I know you would."

Then Benvolio finally left, thanked the nuns on the way out, and pulled his phone out to find a cab. His damn phone was almost dead again, but it was good enough to get him a ride before it died. He crawled into the back and gave the driver the address, settling tiredly into his seat.

"Long day?" the driver asked into the rearview mirror.

"Not too bad," Benvolio responded after a moment as he looked out the window at the dark city going by. "My friend's hopefully gonna get out of the hospital tomorrow, so that's something."

The driver grunted into response and tipped back his cap. "What happened to him?"

Benvolio rubbed a hand across his forehead and gave a simplified version of the story while keeping all the names out. The cab driver nodded occasionally as he talked.

"Oh, the fighting now… it all comes back to the damn Montagues and Capulets, you know?" The cab driver shook his head, and Benvolio could only nod in vague agreement. "You know, I heard…"

And then he launched into a rambling story about a brother-in-law who'd worked for the Capulets and what he'd said about the feud that Benvolio only half listened to. He was tired of it, at the end of the day. What had the Capulets ever actually done to them (other than Tybalt, of course, but that was a vein of thought he didn't want to follow) to warrant this continued hostility? He pinched the bridge of his nose and tuned back in for a moment.

"--heard the Capulet girl was set to marry someone from the prince's family, so that'll probably spell more problems for the Montagues, I'd imagine--"

"Wait," Benvolio said, leaning forward. "Which Capulet girl?"

The cabbie looked back at him, appearing surprised he was listening. "Oh, she's the only child of the main Capulet family,” he supplied. “Josie or Julia or something. I don't know. Sounds like it'll be quite the event though and…"

Benvolio squinted at him, wondering if maybe he'd heard wrong. It couldn't be Juliet, could it? How the hell would that work if she was already married to Romeo? Did anyone else know? They must not. But still...

He shook his head and settled back again. He couldn't deal with it now. He'd talk to someone tomorrow, try to give Romeo a call, and they'd get it straightened out then. Someone with more power than him would know what to do about Romeo.

He sighed to himself as he looked out the window, irritated with himself for a reason he couldn't pin down.

Chapter 11 

Benvolio knocked on Mercutio’s apartment door, but half-heartedly. Mercutio had told him he’d been discharged and sent him a message that Benvolio should come by around dinner time to see him, rather than stopping back at the clinic, but Benvolio couldn’t entirely focus on that at the moment. He was expecting a call or a text or something at least from Romeo. He’d already texted and called him a handful of times after he’d confirmed with his parents that, yes, Juliet Capulet was marrying Paris, another cousin of the prince’s. Of course, they had no idea why he cared, and he didn’t inform them, but it worried away at his brain. Did Romeo know? 

If he did, he’d undoubtedly do something reckless and stupid.

Benvolio rubbed at his forehead and checked his phone again, flipping back through the messages from Romeo as if he could have possibly missed something, some message, some sign.

The door in front of him opened, and he looked up.

Mercutio was in the doorway, beaming and looking very much like his old self as far as clothing and the styling of his hair, which was to say, handsome and flamboyant. Benvolio smiled, tucking his phone back into his pocket.

"Hey there," Mercutio said, and pulled the door open further, revealing an apartment scattered with candles and flowers, a meal laid out on the kitchen table and the waning light from the afternoon spilling into the adjoining living room. 

Benvolio stared at it in amazement, looking between the romantic layout and Mercutio's proud face.

"What…" Benvolio asked, stepping into the room, lips pulling up into a wondering smile, "what is all this?"

"I told you," Mercutio said, smile somehow widening even further, "I like romance if it's with you."

"Seriously?" Benvolio said, looking around again. "This is all for me?"

"Who the hell else is here?" Mercutio threw an arm around Benvolio's waist, tugging him close. "I knew I'd have to do something special once you _finally_ realized you wanted me too." He squeezed the hand on his side. "I knew it was just a matter of time. You couldn't resist my incredible charm forever."

Benvolio knew he was blushing, bewildered and gratified and nervous at once.

"You were so sure, huh?" he replied, trying to get back on familiar footing, teasing and light. He doubted it was successful, with his face still red, his breath catching, his muscles wound tight.

Mercutio smiled at him, his fingers flexing on Benvolio's side. "I actually didn't know," he admitted, his own cheeks going a little pink. "I… hoped though." His eyes traveled over Benvolio's face, flickering across his features, from his lips back to his eyes. "Certain times when you looked at me… when we touched, well…" He cleared his throat. "I guess it just kept the hope alive."

Benvolio slid his arm around the other man's shoulder, his fingers working up the side of Mercutio's scalp to play with the hair there. Mercutio shuddered, eyes sliding closed.

"I'm sorry it took me so long," Benvolio said quietly. "I just didn't… I wasn't…"

"Sure you liked boys?" Mercutio replied, grinning even with his eyes still closed as he leaned into Benvolio's side.

Benvolio shifted a little, nuzzling his cheek against Mercutio's hair, the soft, familiar smell of him. "It's not 'boys' so much, not really," he murmured, stomach twisted inside him. "It's just… you."

Mercutio drew back to look up at him, eyes bright. His lips parted. "You're saying…"

Benvolio bit his lip, watching Mercutio's eyes in the flickering candle fire and orange glow of sunset. 

"I'm saying," Benvolio said, all jokes forgotten, "it's not about boys or girls for me, not really." He took a slow breath but didn't break the eye contact that was taut between them. "I only feel this way about you."

Mercutio stared up at him, lips apart, face strange and enraptured. Benvolio gave a careful smile.

Then Mercutio was kissing him and pushing him backwards against the nearest wall, his hands insistent in Benvolio's hair and around the nape of his neck. Benvolio gasped into his mouth, nerves singing, and he kissed back and let his hands wind around Mercutio's body and up the angles of his back. It was wild and desperate, their bodies tangled together, mouths hot and open. Mercutio let his hands sweep down Benvolio's sides, palms warm as he reached the hem of his shirt and slipped beneath. Benvolio gasped again at the heat of Mercutio's hands on his skin, the firm touch of his fingertips, and Mercutio let his mouth drift to press kisses at his jaw and his throat. He was all contradictions, insistent and gentle, romantic and erotic, and Benvolio was half convinced he was drowning, that he couldn’t feel all of this at once.

He let his fingers dig into Mercutio’s shoulder blades as Mercutio licked and sucked his way down the side of his neck and stroked his hands along Benvolio's waist, just brushing the bottoms of his ribs. It was so fast, so powerful all at once, his whole body on fire, longing and needing and wanting all at once in ways he never had before. He wasn’t someone who lost control, who was taken under by feeling and desire and…

He drew in a shaky breath, didn’t want it to end. The stars were back and aching through his middle, and his hands were actually on Mercutio, running over him, feeling him, smelling him, just him. There was no one else, nothing else to worry about, no one else to care for. Just Mercutio and that incredibly perfect mouth running over him, finding places on his body he’d never imagined could sizzle like this. It was fast. It was intense. It was making him crazy.

"Were…" Benvolio managed, trying to get some of the blood to go back to his brain, "weren't we gonna have dinner?"

Mercutio paused briefly, lips just under his ear. "Did you want to have dinner?"

Benvolio swallowed, feeling Mercutio's breath on his skin, the purr of his voice. "Not especially," he stammered truthfully and felt Mercutio chuckle.

Benvolio reached and caught him by the collars, pulling him back up, staring down into those blue eyes. Mercutio watched him, breathing hard, lips damp. His hands stilled, resting on Benvolio’s bare waist, as they just looked at each other, both panting hard already. That they'd gotten here, figured this out together, that Mercutio had waited. He couldn't quite believe it.

Benvolio took a breath, focused again on those well-kissed lips, and pulled them back up to his mouth. He needed to taste him again, feel all of him, breathe his same air because he was here and alive and wanted him too. With his hands still fisted in the fabric, he also kept Mercutio close, breathing against him and pressing their bodies together against the wall. Mercutio slotted a leg between Benvolio’s longer ones, pushing them even closer together somehow. Benvolio groaned at the warm weight of him, the pressure of his body, and moved his hands up to tangle in his hair. Mercutio made a noise at that, returning to Benvolio's neck and traveling down to explore the dip of his collarbone. His hands were exploring also, sliding down so that his thumbs could push the top of his jeans down and skim into the dips of Benvolio’s hip bones. He twitched in surprise at the intimacy of it, the nearness, and Mercutio immediately drew back.

"Do you want me to stop?" he asked, looking up at Benvolio again, voice husky, hands retreating slightly

Benvolio swallowed again, trying to think, trying to focus. He found he didn't care that he couldn't, could only focus on the feel and smell of Mercutio against him.

"No," he replied, voice cracking a little, and Mercutio smiled.

He found the hem of Benvolio’s shirt again and lifted, which meant they had to separate briefly for Benvolio to pull the shirt off over his head. Once his torso was bared, he looked at Mercutio a bit nervously, more nervous than he’d been with the rest of this so far. He knew he wasn't any Adonis, with his lean form and his almost visible ribs and the line of black hair running down the middle of his chest and reappearing just above his jeans. Sure, they’d seen each other shirtless before, but not like this, not in this sort of context where Mercutio might want someone more attractive, more muscular, more powerful, rather than someone skinny and long like him. He almost said something to that effect, some self-deprecating joke, but it died in the back of his mouth at Mercutio's face.

Mercutio was looking down at him a bit awestruck, reaching out to trace his hands down Benvolio's slender waist, thumbs grazing the sides of his stomach. Benvolio shivered at the touch, at the inspection, at the pink in Mercutio's cheeks as he looked at him.

"Fuck, Ben," he murmured, running his hands back up over him and to his shoulders and then his neck and jaw. His eyes followed their path and finally found Benvolio's own.

Benvolio knew he was blushing again, probably past his face and down into his collarbones. He tried to say something, something stupid that would defuse the crackling tension between them. He found that he couldn't, could only reach out to touch Mercutio's own face, drag a thumb down his cheek and to the corner of his mouth, the smooth slope of his face. Mercutio watched him with a raised eyebrow and darted out his tongue to swipe at Benvolio's thumb. 

Benvolio grinned and moved lower and began to undo the buttons on Mercutio's own shirt.

"Do you mind?" he asked softly, fingers stilling on the second button.

"Not at all," Mercutio replied, watching him with those terribly blue eyes. “Anything, Ben, really…”

Benvolio swallowed and undid the rest of the buttons steadily, hands only shaking a little, and stared unabashedly at the skin that was revealed. Creamy and hair-free and carved gracefully with muscles, lines and angles and shapes Benvolio imagined tracing with his fingers, with his tongue. He knew Mercutio took care of how he looked, was vain in his own foolish, dramatic way, but god, he had reason to be. He was beautiful, the shape of him that Benvolio allowed himself to stare at unabashedly. He found he needed more and moved to push the shirt off Mercutio’s shoulders and let it drop to the floor behind him. With one more glance to check that everything was alright, Benvolio let his fingers drift, following those arches and valleys before stalling on the bandage still over the wound on his side. He found Mercutio's eyes again, eyes that had tracked his movements with rapturous patience.

"Does it hurt?" Benvolio asked, lingering above the bandage.

Mercutio shook his head. "Not really now. It hurts sometimes if I move wrong, make the stitches pull."

Benvolio hesitated. "Can I see?" he asked, fingers drifting to the taped sides.

Mercutio obliged him and pulled the bandage back, revealing the raw line of flesh pulled back together, the precise little sutures holding in the still raw-looking injury.

"Fuck, Merc," Benvolio said, fingers hovering over the wound but not touching it, feeling a bit sick.

"I'm working on it," Mercutio replied, smirking again, which brought Benvolio out of the worried feel that had tried to take over his brain again.

Instead, Benvolio rolled his eyes and smiled. 

"Twelve stitches," Mercutio supplied, turning to look back down at the wound again. He re-covered it after a moment and rubbed the tape flat again before looking up.

Benvolio lay his hand just above it on the warm skin there, unable to fully suppress that feeling, those memories. 

"Seeing it, you bleeding like that…" he whispered, and leaned his head down to rest it against Mercutio's again, hands gripping tighter to his body now, as if he could dig in, could hold him there.

"Hey," Mercutio said softly, "I'm still here." He tilted to kiss one of Benvolio's cheekbones, smiling to himself. "I told you I was always around." A kiss to the other cheek. "That I wasn't going anywhere.” He tipped Benvolio’s chin back up with a finger, forcing him to meet his eyes. He smiled again. “I meant it."

Benvolio smiled, heart very full, and pulled Mercutio's face back to his. He claimed his mouth again.

Somehow they found their way to the bed by fumbling through Mercutio's apartment and tripping over seemingly everything they possibly could because they were unwilling or unable to let go of the other. It involved a lot of swearing and banging toes on furniture and nearly falling down, but they finally made it through the bedroom door. In a moment, Benvolio found himself backwards on the plush softness of the bed, Mercutio above him with his perfect hands and his exploring mouth moving down his body. He drifted lower, hands at his hips. He paused at the zipper of Benvolio's jeans, looking up at him.

"Are you," he said, hands still lingering but face actually looking a little worried, "really sure about this? Because really, it's fine if this is too much or too fast or--"

"I'm not some blushing virgin," Benvolio said with a snort of laughter, reaching down to muss Mercutio's already rather messed up hair. "It's only your gender and what that might entail that's new to me, and it’s you, and--god help me--I trust you, so…”

Mercutio smiled. "Got it," he murmured and undid the zipper. Before proceeding further, though, he patted at Benvolio's pockets and then pulled out his phone. "Might wanna put this somewhere else," he said, passing it up to Benvolio.

Benvolio noted as he took it and moved it toward the bedside table that he had messages waiting. For a moment, his worry from the doorway returned, all those thoughts that Mercutio had so successfully driven out of his head. Now he couldn’t keep from imagining Romeo in danger or doing something stupid. 

Then Mercutio was sliding down his jeans,working them over his hips and his obvious interest in what was happening, and he set his phone aside and ignored it again. He kicked the jeans off the rest of the way and then rolled to get Mercutio under him, spread out in the glorious fading light of the room. He looked down at the beautiful man beneath him for a lingering moment.

"What?" Mercutio asked, grinning and raising an eyebrow. "Appreciating my irresistible body?"

"Yes, actually," Benvolio replied, bending down to kiss along one collarbones, over one pectoral, lingering to flick his tongue across a nipple. 

Mercutio swore, voice guttural. Benvolio chuckled to himself.

"I was just being a cocky asshole," Mercutio muttered, reaching a hand into Benvolio's hair. "I didn't--I wasn't--"

Benvolio moved back up to kiss along his neck. "You're right. The stammering and swearing is pretty attractive." He flashed him a cheeky grin.

Mercutio grunted something and pulled Benvolio's mouth up to his again, their lips and tongues moving as their hands worked over the shape of the other, hips fitting together to press together. It sent a spark up through Benvolio’s body, the feel of them together, the press of Mercutio’s own arousal against his, the taste of him in his mouth. He reached down, slid a hand across Mercutio's hip bone--

His phone buzzed loudly from the bedside table.

Benvolio stilled, looked back over at it worriedly. Mercutio ran a hand up his back.

"Just ignore it," he murmured, lifting his head to kiss a trail over Benvolio's chest.

"But--" Benvolio began, conflicted by the responsive tremble of his body and the responsible part of his brain.

"Whatever it is can wait," Mercutio purred, kissing just under his collarbone. His hands slid lower again. "You're allowed to just enjoy yourself for once, you know."

Benvolio looked back down at him, that kissed-red mouth and the heavy-lidded eyes. He bent and kissed him again and then reached over for his phone. Mercutio sighed and simply continued touching him, licking unrepentantly at his neck, muttering about how he’d distract him with something much more interesting. Benvolio made some incoherent sound and pulled open his messages, working to make sentences, words even.

"Merc, just give me half a second--"

"Never," Mercutio replied, reaching down now to slide a hand against his erection, which made Benvolio twitch again. Mercutio cupped him softly, let his hand move gently against him.

Benvolio’s eyes closed as he groaned and moved against Mercutio's hand, but he forced them back open to read. It was just a moment of responsibility, reassuring himself he could truly relax for one perfect evening.

The message was from Friar Lawrence, in all caps. Benvolio went cold immediately, whole body switching automatically to emergency, to action, to looking after Romeo. He read the short message again:

ROMEO IN TROUBLE. MEET ME AT J CAPULET'S TOMB. NOT DEAD.

"What is it?" Mercutio asked, looking at him sharply, hands moving now to stroking up his sides again, obviously noticing the drastic change in Benvolio’s demeanor.

Benvolio reacted without thinking, heart pounding, and climbed out of the bed, careful of Mercutio's wound but little else. Phone still clenched in one hand and his heart a knot in his chest, he scanned the floor for his jeans. He found them, tried to pull them on while still clutching his phone, stumbled backwards and nearly fell.

"Fuck," he growled, throwing his phone on the bed, angry at himself, angry at Romeo, angry at the universe, angry at his name. "Fuck this whole stupid, damn, fucking--"

Mercutio was in front of him immediately, reaching over to steady him, hands grabbing his arms firmly. "Ben, what's going on?" His face looked a bit panicked.

Benvolio yanked his jeans on even with Mercutio's hands on him, emotions whiplashing through him: anger, regret, fear, frustration. 

"Romeo," he said finally, feeling a bit like he might cry. "I have to go save him."

Mercutio sighed, shook his head, and let his hands drop. "Right." He carded a hand through his hair, face changing a bit and looked back up at him. "Why though? Why always you?"

Benvolio paused long enough to stare down at him, this beautiful man, glossy and nearly naked, still rumpled and sweaty and marked with the faint signs of lips and hands. Mercutio met his eyes, waiting, and Benvolio felt like someone was cutting him open. Mercutio was here, actually wanting him, just him, just Benvolio, actually caring about this lesser Montague just for himself. He could still taste him in his mouth, feel his sweat on his skin. Mercutio, who listened to him, cared about what he wanted, had set up this beautiful apartment because he thought Benvolio was worth it.

Mercutio reached up and touched his cheek, and Benvolio almost said "fuck it." He wanted to, with that look in Mercutio’s eyes. He almost threw his phone out the nearest window and spent the rest of the night just tasting Mercutio's skin and breathing his smell and feeling his hands and seeing, in every way possible, how much Mercutio actually lived up to all his bragging.

Benvolio squeezed his eyes shut a moment and then opened them again, finding the other man’s eyes again.

"Because it's who I am," he said finally, feeling the words wrenched from out of his chest, the truth of them like salt in his mouth. "Because whether it's fate or training or choice, doing this--caring, protecting, looking after my cousin…" he managed a breath and covered Mercutio's hand on his face with his own, "it's who I am."

Mercutio watched at him, looking strangely sad for a moment before it passed. A tender smile replaced it.

"I know," he said. He shook his head and patted Benvolio's cheek. "Of course I know it's who you are. I’ve always known. I told you before,” he said, face so infinitely fond that Benvolio almost gave him again and just threw him backwards into the bed, wound and Romeo be damned, “you’re something special, Ben. Better than the rest of us, even if it’s inconvenient.” He grunted something like a laugh to himself and finished, “That's the you I fell in love with, so I can’t complain now. Come on.” He turned to track down his own jeans. “Let's get going."

He bent to pick up his pants, letting out another dramatic sigh and leaving Benvolio staring at him, shellshocked.

"You--" he stammered, brain jamming up like a clogged machine, "you love me."

Mercurio whirled, holding his jeans out in front of him, face going red. "What? I didn't--that's not--"

Benvolio felt something like a smile pulling at his face. "You said you fell in love with me."

“Look, that’s not--it’s not--” Mercutio stammered, face going wild with embarrassment.

“You _love_ me,” Benvolio said again, surely smiling like the cat that got the cream, heart full to bursting in his chest, both at Mercutio’s words and at his obvious embarrassment. “You--”

"Do you wanna talk about this _now_ ," Mercutio snapped, still very red, "or do you wanna go save your idiot, cock-blocking cousin?"

Benvolio's brain clicked back to working. "Right. Damn it--but wait, you're coming?"

"Of course I'm coming," Mercutio replied, tugging his jeans back on. "Why wouldn't I?"

"Because you were stabbed two days ago?" Benvolio said, incredulous. "Because you're supposed to be dead?"

Mercutio waved a hand and zipped his pants again. "Screw all that. Where are we going?"

Benvolio stared at him a while longer, realized he was still shirtless and halfway into his pants, and finished what he was doing. Mercutio moved past him to go find their discarded shirts, and Benvolio picked his phone back up and followed him out. Mercutio threw his t-shirt back his way and began pulling his own shirt back on as well. With it hanging open, he moved around the room and blew out candles.

"Thank you," Benvolio said finally, holding his shirt awkwardly in front of him and watching Mercutio circle back toward the front door, hands going to his buttons. He paused to rebutton his own shirt, and Benvolio found he couldn’t look away from the display. Every inch of that gorgeous skin covered up again, those deft fingers on the buttons...

Mercutio smirked at him. "Keep looking at me like that and we're definitely not gonna leave this apartment."

Benvolio glanced away and tugged his t-shirt back over his head. "Right. Uh, and you asked where we were going.”

Mercutio nodded.

Benvolio cleared his throat. “We're, uh, going to Juliet Capulet's tomb. There’s more to the message, but I don’t know what it means right now..."

"We're…" Mercutio blinked at him and then finished his last button. "God's sake."

"Yeah," Benvolio said, smoothing down his hair as he headed toward the door. "Ready?"

Mercutio grabbed his keys and then caught Benvolio's arm. "Almost," he said, and pulled him in for a last, deep, searing kiss. 

He let him go a moment later, and Benvolio stared down at him feeling a bit dazed. He wet his lips but no words came. Mercutio laughed and pulled open the door, which snapped Benvolio back to reality.

“My god, you’re distracting,” he said, following Mercutio through the door.

“Aww, thank you,” Mercutio replied, grinning, “but you better not make me run around the city with a hard-on again after tonight.”

"No promises," Benvolio replied, grinning too, and patted Mercutio's ass as he passed.

Chapter 12 

It had started to rain just a little when they pulled up to the cemetery, and Benvolio was back to a sort of focused panic on finding Romeo, or Friar Lawrence, or anyone who might know what the hell was going on. Mercutio had called the prince, just in case, but otherwise had spent most of the cab ride speculating about what idiocy Romeo had gotten up to now. None of it was reassuring Benvolio, who had eventually told Mercutio he'd strangle him if he said another word, and Mercutio had turned back to making inappropriate jokes instead. That was a bit better at least.

They both climbed out of the cab into the dark, drizzly night, using their phones as makeshift flashlights as they searched. It was quiet and muddy and seemed abandoned as they wove through the headstones and mausoleums and trees and flower gardens. The grass was soggy with water, and before long the two of them were dripping too. The cold rain ran down the back of Benvolio's neck, and he tried to shake it away. Why the hell were they out here, tramping through a cold, wet cemetery when he could have been in a warm bed with Mercutio's mouth on his skin again? He frowned, once again frustrated with himself. Damn the stars. Damn being named to be a peacemaker. Damn his family. Damn Romeo especially. He couldn’t think any of it with a terrible amount of intensity, but he could feel a pang of frustration at what he was missing out on. God knows what he and Mercutio would be doing now if he hadn't hauled them out here to muck about after Romeo. Wild, hot, ridiculous things, Benvolio was sure, images coming unbidden to mind-- 

A twig snapped somewhere deeper in, and Benvolio came back to reality, to the anxiety in his stomach. He gestured forward, following the noise.

"What exactly are we looking for?" Mercutio asked, coming up beside him as they walked.

"I'm not totally sure," Benvolio admitted, "but we--"

There was a shout from somewhere ahead, and Benvolio felt relatively sure the voice belonged to Romeo. Without thinking, he broke into a run heading toward it. When he realized Mercutio was no longer beside him, he slowed and looked back. Mercutio was still walking but waved him off.

"Can't run yet, not comfortably," he said, grimacing a little. "Go ahead. I'll catch up."

Benvolio hesitated a moment, lingering, but when there was another sound of angry voices ahead, he gave Mercutio a sharp nod and started forward again. He ran, still scanning headstones and keeping an eye out for people. There was more shouting ahead, and he pushed out of a last stand of trees and into one of the strangest sights he'd ever seen.

A tomb door that had been pried open. Flowers scattered and turning to mush on the wet ground. Some man in a heavy coat with his hands raised and his nose bleeding. Romeo holding a gun with a shaky hand, the barrel trained on the other man, his eyes bright and wild.

"Oh for fuck's sake," Benvolio swore and stumbled forward.

Both men whirled, obviously not expecting anyone else out in a cemetery in the middle of the night while it was raining. Romeo trained the gun on the newcomer, and the other man just stared in surprise and snuffled through his bloody nose. Benvolio didn’t even bother putting up his hands in surrender, body now pulsing with adrenhile like he’d never felt before. He continued, heedless of the gun and the other person, toward his cousin.

“Be-Benvolio?” Romeo stuttered, staring at him in confusion.

“What the hell are you doing?” Benvolio demanded, ignoring the fact that the gun was still pointed toward him now, as if Romeo actually might consider him a threat. His heart was pounding, but he continued sloshing forward through the wet and muddy grass.

“I--how did you--” Romeo began, his whole body shaking and dripping with rain, eyes bloodshot.

“And why the fuck do you have a _gun_?” Benvolio nearly yelled, years of pent up frustration at his cousin careening through him now. Years of chasing him around, taking care of him, comforting him, being his sheepdog. He loved him like a brother, and right now also hated him like a brother. It blazed through him the closer he got to Romeo’s shaky, bewildered form.

Benvolio didn’t even think about it. He grabbed the gun out of Romeo’s hand immediately and threw it somewhere off into the bushes where he thought he heard it hit branches and then splash into a puddle. He hadn’t taken his eyes from Romeo’s face, and Romeo just stared for a moment at his empty hand and then back at Benvolio’s face.

“How…” Romeo tried again, “how are you here?”

“I could ask you the same question!” Benvolio yelled back.

He couldn’t control it, couldn’t control the timbre of his voice or the wild gestures of his hands or the eyes that flashed as they glared at Romeo. He’d been controlled for so long. 

Sometimes you get tired of being good.

“Seriously, Romeo, what the hell?” he demanded again. “You’re supposed to be banished! You’re supposed to be safe! You are, in no way, shape, or form, supposed to be _here_!”

“That’s what I told him!” the other man suddenly chimed up, voice going high at the end.

Benvolio whirled on him too, pointing sharply toward him. “I’ll get to you in a minute, whoever you are.” 

The man looked startled but didn't say anything else, so Romeo turned back to his cousin. Romeo was looking more and more like he was shrinking into a child again, crumpling in upon himself, body looking thin and ragged and strange. He stared at Benvolio almost like he couldn't quite see him.

“Seriously, Romeo," Benvolio asked, voice a little softer, "what are you doing here?”

Romeo swallowed hard, eyes looking like they were about to spill over again. “Juliet,” he managed finally, at a broken whisper. “I had to…” he seemed to be trying to find words, emotions flickering across his face, “see her at least. One more time. I couldn’t just… just…” He swallowed again, his eyes continuing to look bright but not crying.

Benvolio bit his lip. "Romeo, you--" 

Romeo shook his head, actually looking more resolved again somehow. “I love her, and I can’t be without her.”

Benvolio sighed and rubbed his forehead, his sopping hair sending uncomfortable rivulets running down his face. Some of the fire was going out of him again. “God, Romeo, look I--”

“Paris? Seriously?” Mercutio’s voice cut through the opening around the tomb as he finally emerged from the trees, looking irritated and holding his side. 

The other man, Paris apparently, turned to face him in amazement. His eyes widened, face going pale. “Mercutio, you--”

“Yes, I’m alive,” Mercutio replied, frowning. “I assumed the others would have told you. I told the family as soon as I got out of the hospital, but _apparently_ you’ve been too busy with whatever this shit-show is to pay attention.”

Paris stammered something and then ran and threw himself around his cousin’s shoulders, sobbing against him.

"Christ's sake…" Mercutio muttered, and Benvolio shook his head at Mercutio’s put-out face and insincere pats to Paris’ shoulders. Then he turned back to look at Romeo.

He was staring with horror toward Mercutio, face going even more bloodless than before. His mouth opened and closed a few times, and his eyes flicked back and forth between Benvolio and Mercutio. One hand shook again as he pointed it toward Mercutio, eyes wide toward Benvolio again.

“He survived,” Benvolio said, guilt slithering up in him again faced with Romeo's horrified, betrayed expression. He wanted to explain, justify it, find something he could say... “Barely survived, and he was in the hospital, but he... he’s not dead.”

“He’s…” Romeo echoed, swallowing again. “How did--why did--”

“I’m sorry,” Benvolio said, stepping closer and putting a hand on Romeo’s shoulder. “I’m sorry--I should have told you once I knew he was ok. I just didn’t--I wasn’t sure--” He shook his head. “There’s no excuse.” He squeezed the hand on his shoulder, and Romeo looked at it dimly before returning to his face. “He’s alive, though,” Benvolio added, trying to smile. “That’s good, right?”

Romeo still looked a bit like he didn’t trust his own eyes, face still pale and strained, but he finally looked back at Benvolio with a bit more clarity.

“Yeah,” he said finally, voice distant and looking back over at Mercutio, who was now chiding his cousin rather loudly. “Yeah, that’s good he’s alive.”

“So, hey,” Benvolio said, turning his voice back toward the more gentle, helpful tone he typically tried to use with Romeo, “let’s get in out of the rain and we can talk about all this more, ok? And you can see for yourself that Mercutio’s ok. Yeah?”

Romeo turned to face Benvolio again, eyes coming back into clearer focus. He shrugged from out of Benvolio’s hand, taking a sharp step back. 

“No,” he said shortly and ran back toward the open tomb door.

“No, Romeo, wait--” Benvolio shouted, but Romeo had already ducked inside, disappearing into the dark.

Benvolio hesitated, fear nipping at his heels, and he glanced back at Mercutio. Paris was still clinging to him and crying, but Mercutio was hardly paying attention to him now.

“Go after him,” Mercutio said to Benvolio, with a sharp gesture toward the tomb.

Benvolio took a deep breath, nodded once, and ducked through the door of the tomb. Breath catching, he started down the stairs.

The air was stale and cold within, the first few steps slick with the rain that had leaked in, the dark only broken by one lightbulb at the bottom of the stairs. Benvolio went more quickly, watching his feet as he worked his way down into the scent of dust and flowers and untouched air. He finally emerged into a dimly lit chamber with a low ceiling, the walls bare and cold, the only thing within a bed on which laid a young woman, and Romeo. Romeo was clinging to the woman's hand, tears now falling down his cheeks. Benvolio stayed back, let him have his moment.

“At least Death hasn’t stolen your beauty yet,” Romeo murmured, smoothing the hair away from the woman's face as he gazed into it. “Your beautiful lips, your cheeks, my love…” 

More tears fell, and Benvolio’s heart clenched inside him. She did look very much alive still, somehow. She was slim and young, with long loose hair spread out around her face, her face still touched with pink. Benvolio looked away, stomach clenching. Mercutio had looked more dead when he’d been at the clinic, but at least he’d still been breathing. Benvolio’s brow furrowed, and he pulled his phone back out, still staying back to give Romeo some privacy, even if he refused to leave him entirely.

“I’ll never leave you again,” Romeo murmured, kissing her hand. “I’ll stay with you always, right by your side. Where else would I ever need to be?” He almost seemed to smile, looking down at her. "I’ll let my eyes look one more time, my arms hold you one more time, give you one more kiss…” He bent to embrace her, place a gentle kiss to her mouth, his eyes shutting tight.

Benvolio looked at the message from Friar Lawrence again and chewed at his lip.

Romeo reached into his pocket and pulled out a little vial, holding it in his shaking hands. He looked once more at Juliet, face soft. 

“Alright, my friend,” he said, focusing once more on the bottle, voice breaking, “bring me back to my Juliet.” 

He raised the vial.

Benvolio recognized immediately what was happening. After all this, all the years of chasing him around, protecting him, he wasn't about to lose his cousin now.

He lunged forward, grabbed Romeo, and Romeo actually yelped in surprise and struggled, fist closing around the bottle even tighter.

"What are you doing?" Romeo yelled, pulling away. "Just let me be with her!"

“No!” Benvolio snarled, feeling a bit unhinged, and grappled at him more, dragging him away from Juliet’s body. “No! You’re not doing that! I won’t let you!”

“Let me go!” Romeo cried, trying to struggle away from him again until they both crashed against the wall. 

Benvolio felt the wind knocked out of him, but he didn’t let go. Romeo was probably the stronger of the two of them, especially powered as he was by his grief, but Benvolio was tired of being the gentler of the two. He clung on, pulling at the bottle, yanking at Romeo’s arms, tripping over himself and his cousin as they fought.

“Just leave! Let me go!” Romeo yelled, shoving an elbow into Benvolio’s gut, but Benvolio hung on regardless.

“Never,” Benvolio growled through his gritted teeth. “I’m not letting you go--not letting you do this. Hate me all you want!” He dragged him backwards, further from the body. 

“I _do_ hate you!” Romeo snarled. “You lying, self-righteous--” He shoved his weight into Benvolio again, clearly trying to push him off completely.

Benvolio refused to be shoved, and simply dragged Romeo back with him as he fell against the wall again, grunting as his shoulder blades hit stone. He still refused to let go. “Hate me with every fiber of your being if you want to," he growled, "but at least you’ll be alive! And she--I think she’s--”

Romeo struggled away again, shoving his shoulder against his cousin’s chest. Benvolio grunted in pain, still keeping his hand closed around Romeo’s that held the bottle. 

“How could you possibly understand what this feels like?” Romeo cried. “You can’t! You don’t understand--” He pushed at him again, but Benvolio hung on.

“I understand enough!” Benvolio shouted back. “And the friar--he wrote me something--I think she’s--” 

Romeo shoved into him again, cutting him off, but Benvolio got ahold of the bottle and finally pried it from his hands. Romeo shouted and reached for him again, and Benvolio finally used his height to keep it out of reach and loop one arm tight around Romeo’s neck, forcing him to be still.

“Listen to me for half a second, you strubborn, dramatic, fucking _idiot_ ,” Benvolio hissed. “I think Juliet’s still _alive_ , you colossal piece of--”

As if on cue, the girl who had been lying so still on the bed suddenly took a great, gasping breath. Both Montagues stopped immediately, still tangled up together but watching her now. The woman took another breath, and her eyes opened slowly, groggily. Her fingers flexed, her arms began to move, and most importantly, her chest rose and fell. She still moved slowly, like she’d been in a very deep sleep and wasn’t entirely sure she was awake yet, but she was definitely, most certainly, not dead. 

Her mouth moved, as if she was trying to whisper something. "Rom…" she breathed. "Romeo?"

Benvolio let Romeo’s neck go but kept hold of the vial, just in case, as Romeo slipped away from him and approached the girl slowly.

“Juliet?” he asked quietly, voice trembling, taking tiny steps toward her as if afraid she’d disappear before his eyes.

She shifted, blinked more, managed to push herself up on her elbows to look at the rest of the crypt. When her eyes found Romeo, her face broke into a smile like the sun rising after a long and very dark night.

“Romeo,” she said, still beaming, still beautiful, her cheeks pink and her eyes bright and her hair falling in cascading waves around her face. “You’re here.”

Romeo was there in an instant, arms thrown around her and holding her against him, gasping as his tears fell again. She looked startled by his emotion but hung on, still smiling and burying her face against his shoulder. She stroked a hand over his hair, down his neck.

“I thought I lost you,” Romeo said, still holding her close. “I was told you died and I thought--I was--”

“No!” Juliet said immediately, actually laughing a little as she clung to Romeo and began to pepper his face with kisses. “No, it worked just like it was supposed to! I don’t have to marry Paris, you’re here, and we can leave and be together.” She held his face, brushing the tears from under his eyes. “Just like we’re meant to be.”

“I love you,” Romeo said, pulling her into a kiss. She kissed back, gasping against him.

Oh, that was plenty. Benvolio looked away and cleared his throat, which startled the two lovers to look back at him in surprise.

“If you two are ok now,” he said, “I’m gonna take off.” He jerked a thumb back up toward the door. “Um, nice meeting you,” he added awkwardly, to a still confused looking Juliet. “Glad you’re not dead. Congrats on marrying my cousin.”

Another smile broke across her face. “Oh, cousin! You must be Benvolio.”

He looked at her in surprise, and then back to Romeo, who just smiled at him weakly.

“You told her about me?” Benvolio asked, motioning to himself.

“Of course I did,” Romeo replied. “You’re my best friend, and... basically my brother.”

Benvolio smiled too, feeling a bit wrung out by the events of the evening. “Right,” he said softly. “So… hopefully I’ll see you both again sometime.”

Then he headed back up the stairs, feeling suddenly very tired and noting the oncoming bruises on his shoulders and ribs that he’d been able to ignore while in the tomb. He walked stiffly, feeling the rain start on his head again as he emerged.

Emerged, it turned out, into an even stranger scene than the one he’d encountered before.

Benvolio sighed. “Of course.”

Chapter 13 

A crowd of Capulets were there, and at least four police officers, and the prince and some of his advisors, and Mercutio and Paris, and finally Friar Lawrence, and some people who probably worked at the cemetery, all clustered around in the rain, some with umbrellas, many just getting wet, many shouting at each other. As Benvolio emerged, all eyes snapped to him.

“See!” screeched Mr. Capulet. “A Montague _desecrating_ my poor daughter’s grave!”

“I’m not--” Benvolio said, putting up his hands in surrender, but was immediately bowled over by more shrieking and arguing and people shouting for others to be quiet.

“He’s not _desecrating_ anything!” Mercutio barked over the noise, which just made both Capulets gesture more wildly.

“And this man! We were told he was dead, that his death led to our Tybalt’s death!” Mrs. Capulet said, alternating between pointing at Mercutio and the prince.

“I was still stabbed by your whatever-he-was… nephew? Cousin?” Mercutio made a frantic gesture, cutting off the talking that had started again. “It doesn’t matter! Tybalt still tried to kill me, and it was only _that_ man,” he said, jabbing sharply at Benvolio, “who saved my life so that I could be here to listen to you all scream at each other.”

More people shouted then, at the police, at the prince, at each other. Benvolio, who was still half in a tomb with his hands raised, watched it all feeling exhausted again. From out of the trees, Romeo’s parents suddenly emerged, both bundled up in large coats and looking tired and angry at being woken up in the middle of the night and dragged out into the rain. At their arrival, the Capulets turned their attention there and began yelling at them now about their terrible children breaking into tombs and killing people. Mrs. Montague looked in confusion at Benvolio’s position, and he could only shake his head.

In fact, as the shouting continued, Benvolio decided to dip back down into the tomb. He walked quickly down the last couple steps to find the pair of lovers still sitting on the bed, holding each other and talking in low voices. They looked up in surprise at his arrival.

“Uh, Benvolio, what--” Romeo began.

“You two need to come up now,” Benvolio said, cutting him off with a sharp cut of his hand through the air. “Both your families are losing their damn minds, and I think it’s time this finally got figured out.”

Juliet stared at him now, face falling. “They’ll never let us be together…”

“That’s why we were gonna leave,” Romeo said, face falling. “It’s the only way.”

Benvolio sighed. “We’ll see. Regardless, you can’t live in a tomb forever, so can you just come up now please?”

The lovers looked at each other again, faces that echoed each other’s fear, and Benvolio simply started back up the stairs hoping they'd follow.

People were even closer to the entrance now when his head became visible again, all still glaring and shouting and gesturing wildly at each other. Benvolio tried to say something when the shouting turned to him again, more things about how rude and horrible he was, but he kept getting talked over. He even turned to Romeo’s parents, but they yelled over him too. He sighed again and looked at Mercutio, who was watching him with a sort of wry, mocking smile.

“Could you?” Benvolio asked tiredly, sure he wasn’t heard over the people again, but figuring Mercutio would understand regardless. He motioned to the people all around him.

Mercutio smirked and flicked his eyebrows up and down, grin growing again. Then he cupped his hands to his mouth and bellowed at the most impossibly loud, Mercutio-only level possible, “Everyone shut the hell up and listen to Benvolio or I’m gonna stab myself again and die for real this time!”

People were startled enough by the volume, and the declaration, that they actually went quiet and turned to look at the man still part-way out of the tomb. They moved back, giving him the space to climb the rest of the way out. Amazingly, they actually watched him in silence, eyes wide.

“Hello everyone,” Benvolio began lamely, unsure exactly what he was supposed to do now that he actually had everyone’s attention. He cleared his throat and decided to push forward regardless. 

“A few things to clarify,” he said, raising his hands again. “Yes, I told everyone that Mercutio was dead because one,” he held up a finger, nod toward where Mercutio was watching him proudly, “I thought he still might die; two,” another finger, “because I wanted to be sure he was safe and undisturbed so he could heal, and three,” he held up a last finger and steeled himself, all that anger he was so careful to suppress finally burning up again, “because I’m sick of this god damn fucking feud.”

There were a few gasps, either at his proclamation or his language or both, but Benvolio didn’t care.

“The feud is idiotic!” he continued, voice rising. “What good does it do anyone? No one in my generation even knows what it’s about or why it matters!"

"Benvolio, you listen--" said Mr. Montague, who was then cut off by Mr. Capulet who snapped, "Disrespectful every one of you--"

Benvolio continued over the noise anyway, gesturing sharply, and more people went quiet again. "It’s causing fighting in the street,” he gestured toward the prince, who nodded to him and glared around at the squabbling families, “and near-death,” a gesture to Mercutio, who grinned and spread his hands, “and some _actual_ death,” he finished, looking over at the Capulet, "which never should have had to happen."

As he finished, Romeo and Juliet emerged slowly from the tomb too, clinging tight to each other’s hands. They both looked pale and nervous, watching the crowd of people warily. There were more gasps this time, some voices breaking out again, some more shouting happening. Mrs. Capulet burst into tears and ran to her daughter, touching her face and stoking her hair and sending death-glares at Romeo. At that, Mrs. Montague approached too and began to say something else.

As all the noise began to grow in volume again, Mercutio rolled his eyes and yelled, “I’m not kidding about the stabbing myself!”

The crowd fell silent again. Romeo looked up at Benvolio nervously, once more looking like that child Benvolio had protected so many times, had always taken care of, had managed to save. Benvolio took a deep breath, rested a hand on his shoulder.

It wasn’t such a bad job, all things considered. Not when you were made for it.

“And now,” Benvolio continued to the quieted crowd, “a kid from both your houses has fallen in love and gotten married.”

The noise started up again, but it only took Mercutio making a violent gesture for them all to shut up again.

“They love each other, regardless of the feud,” Benvolio said, "and got married so they could be together." He looked at Friar Lawrence, hoping for some clarity, and the friar obliged.

"I married them in secret," he said, and all eyes snapped to him now. He held himself steady. "I was also the one who provided the medicine to make Juliet appear dead so that she could escape her marriage to Paris."

Both sets of parents gasped, looking in horror at Romeo and Juliet, and Benvolio shook his head and rubbed his temples.

“See?" he said, gesturing aggressively over at the lovers. "Juliet was even willing to fake her own death to be with him! And Romeo here, well…” He stole a glance at Romeo again, his still pale but resolved face. “Romeo was willing to die to be with her too.”

A few gasps broke out through the crowd again, and Benvolio glared around at them.

“They are willing to either run away or literally _die_ simply to be together. And because of all of _you_!” Benvolio snapped, gesturing around at the crowd. “Well, not the prince, or the cops, or whatever, but you two!” he amended, coloring slightly, but then pointed more sharply at the small crowd of Capulets and the two Montagues. Romeo's parents looked at Benvolio in shock, and the Capulets looked ready to throw something at him. 

For once in his life, he kept going anyway, voice rising. 

“You two families! Are you really willing to lose your own _children_ just to keep up this pointless feud? Because you will,” Benvolio finished, looking back at Romeo and Juliet, who were still clinging to each other’s hands.

Romeo raised his chin and stared down the crowd, and Juliet did the same, both equally unflinching in their love and resolve. Benvolio had to smile. Look at Romeo finding someone who was actually like him for once.

At the same time, the terrible thought “dear god there’s two of them” flashed across his brain, but he pushed it away.

“So what do you say?” Benvolio asked the feuding families finally, staring them all down in turn. "Are you willing to lose your kids just for a pointless feud?"

To his amazement, many of them actually looked away from his gaze, their faces going a bit red, their eyes ashamed. From their previous expressions, he hadn't thought he'd be successful, but now… He kept his head raised, staring them all down. 

The prince was watching Benvolio with appreciation, his arms crossed over his chest. Benvolio had to look away and found Mercutio’s eyes instead. He was grinning, positively beaming with a pride that made Benvolio blush.

“So you see what your feud has already done, and what it can do,” the prince said firmly. “I second this man and ask you, what do you say now?”

There was a moment of awkward shuffling, a strange quiet in the cemetery as the rain began to slow to just a sprinkle that dripped against the leaves. Finally, Mr. Capulet stepped toward Mr. Montague, not quite looking him in the eye, his face pale.

“I will not lose my daughter,” he said, extending his hand. “The end of the feud will be my blessing on this marriage.” He looked over at Juliet, gave her a solemn nod, to which she smiled again, squeezing Romeo’s hand.

Mr. Montague hesitated a moment, looking once more at the lovers, accepted the hand. “I… agree with you. There’s been enough fighting, enough death, and I suppose it’s time.”

They shook firmly, and the rest of the group let out what felt like a joined breath that had been held for a very long time. The prince nodded, looking around at the group.

“We’ll discuss this further in the morning,” he said, looking between the two groups again. “It’s time this was all legally resolved.”

There was more talking then, but more civilly this time, more hands shaken, more apologies made. People were focused on the prince now, and on each other.

“Thank god,” Benvolio said only to himself, although Romeo heard it and looked over. 

He let go of Juliet’s hand for a moment so that he could throw his arms around his cousin, hugging him tight. Benvolio hugged back, a little more hesitant.

“Thank you,” Romeo said as he drew back. “You’ve done... “ He actually colored a little. “You’ve always done so much for me--everything for me, and I’ve been…” He rubbed his face and let his hand back. “In the tomb…”

Benvolio shook his head. “We both said a lot of stupid things. It was a tense time and, you know," he managed a smile, "we Montagues tend to go a bit stupid under pressure.”

“Still,” Romeo said, smiling a little too, “I… I’ve never thanked you enough for looking out for me, and I should.” 

He looked back up at Benvolio, and for once, Romeo looked like himself again, tired and bedraggled but no longer burdened by rejection or lost love or fear. He seemed whole, and Benvolio actually saw past the child he tended to picture with Romeo when he was in trouble. It was like a glimpse of the man he actually was, the world where they could truly just be friends, be brothers.

“Thank you, Benvolio,” Romeo said finally, reaching back to take Juliet’s hand. She smiled at him and looked up at Benvolio too. “For everything," Romeo finished.

Benvolio nodded, blushing slightly. "God it's getting sappy for hanging out in a graveyard in the rain." He pulled on his collar and looked up at the last few fading droplets, but added, truthfully, as he looked back at his cousin, “Anytime, Romeo. I’m always gonna be here for you.” He shrugged. “It’s who I am.”

“That’s right,” Mercutio said, appearing beside them from through the crowd and looping an arm around Benvolio’s waist. “Our peacemaker, aren’t you?”

Benvolio grunted but put his own arm around Mercutio’s shoulder. “What a week this’s been,” he muttered, feeling unpleasantly wet and tired and battered. "Can it be over now?"

Romeo nodded and looked at the commingled Montagues and Capulets, which included a lot of tense shoulders and narrowed eyes, but no open hostility. There may even have been moments for friendliness.

"Maybe it will be," Romeo said, taking a deep breath.

"It better be," Juliet added.

“Which means,” Mercutio said, raising an eyebrow and smirking again. “you, my dear Benvolio, might get a break from sheepdog duty for a little while.” 

Romeo looked at them in confusion. "Wait, who's he been herding?"

Both men gave him a pointed look until he colored and looked away.

"Ah," Romeo said, rubbing his wet hair out of his face, looking embarrassed. "Got it."

Juliet chuckled and wrapped her arms around him. She shot Benvolio a smile, and for a moment, he could truly understand how Romeo could fall in love with her so quickly. 

"I'll be helping shepherd him from now on," she said and pressed a kiss to Romeo's damp, red cheek.

"See? All settled," Mercutio said, and he turned back to Benvolio. “So now, you could actually, you know," he raised an eyebrow, "enjoy yourself for once.”

Benvolio grinned back, some of that warmth returning to his stomach, and he looked back over at Romeo, who looked startled and slightly uncomfortable. Juliet looked slightly confused but simply burrowed her face further into Romeo's shoulder.

"So, you two…" Romeo said, gesturing back and forth at them, "that's actually a… thing that's happening?"

"Well, if your drama would stop cock-blocking us," Mercutio said with a smirk, "then yes, there'd be at least two _things_ that would be interacting between us."

Benvolio laughed, at Mercutio being Mercutio and at Romeo's shocked face. Juliet was pink but giggling, which was encouraging that she'd fit nicely with the odd little group they had which could hopefully continue, with just a few changes to their traditional roles.

"So?" Mercutio asked Benvolio, eyebrow raised again. "My place? Now maybe?"

“Well,” Benvolio said, grinning more widely as he looked back at Romeo, “you heard the man. I’m off duty, so I’m gonna head back to the lovely date my boyfriend set up for me.”

Romeo looked even more startled at that, and Juliet said something that neither one heard, because Benvolio towed Mercutio away from the group and back toward the trees, and the street, and the waiting apartment. 

“Boyfriend, huh?” Mercutio asked, looking up at him with that cheeky smile again.

Benvolio laughed. “Hey, you’re the one who said you loved me.”

Mercutio chuckled too and pulled him closer, ignoring the noise of the no longer feuding families as it faded away behind them.

Epilogue 

Sunlight was streaming in the window and disturbing what would have been otherwise an incredibly comfortable, warm, nice-smelling jumble of two bodies. The sun was ruining this by landing squarely across Benvolio's closed eyes, pulling him out of the deep and well-deserved sleep he'd been in. He squinted at the light but refused to move. Partially it was because he couldn't, at least not without disturbing the legs hooked in around his own, and the body partially across him, and the blanket all knotted up around him that mostly obscured Mercutio from view. He was clearly still sleeping comfortably, the whole naked puddle of him draped over Benvolio, but Benvolio was awake now and glaring at the window for doing that to him. He didn't want to be awake, didn't want the night to end.

Of course, that bit in the middle with the cemetery and the feuding families had felt like a weird fever dream, but everything before and after had been pretty close to perfect. Benvolio shifted slightly, enough to get the sun from being right in his eyes, and tried to find Mercutio in the jumble of blankets. There were the legs, of course, and some bare torso, and finally a head with wild hair mostly buried under the blankets. Benvolio moved one aside enough to see his face, loose and comfortable in sleep, and to run his fingertips gently through his tousled hair.

Mercutio adjusted positions slightly but didn't open his eyes. Benvolio stilled.

"No, don't stop," Mercutio mumbled, moving to butt his head further into Benvolio's hand. "If you're gonna be awake you can at least be useful."

Benvolio chuckled and carded his fingers back through his hair again. "Useful, huh? That's all I am to you?"

"This early in the morning?" Mercutio murmured, knotting his legs tighter around Benvolio's. "Yes."

Benvolio looked up at the clock on the wall, which showed that it was actually almost noon, and snorted. "Early in the morning, my ass."

"Your ass indeed," Mercutio replied with a smile, finally cracking open his eyes. He scooted closer and tucked his head in under his arm, running a hand down his bare chest. "Your ass, your chest, your mouth, your hips, your cock…"

Benvolio laughed and tried to push him off, but Mercutio refused to untangle.

"Idiot," Benvolio muttered, smoothing a hand through his hair again.

"Obviously," Mercurio muttered back, letting out a long sigh. "Now go back to sleep."

Benvolio looked back at the window, the brightness of the sun through the blinds. "I can't now," he muttered and pressed a kiss to Mercutio's forehead. 

"Well, I can," Mercutio responded, snuggling back down and closing his eyes again.

Benvolio just snuggled down with him, rotating so they were facing each other instead, and let his hands run down Mercutio's arms and side, careful of the bandage, while he pressed kisses to his cheeks and eyelids. Mercutio muttered something but didn't pull away, and Benvolio moved to kiss his shoulder, his arms, his chest. Mercutio grumbled but reached up and caught his head, digging his fingers into his hair.

"Ben…" he murmured, "if you think this is gonna work…"

Benvolio slid his hands lower, over a thigh, a hipbone, down to Mercutio's waiting and clearly interested erection. He took it gently in his hand, stroked over it, as he moved back to kiss at Mercutio's throat.

"Isn't it?" he asked, grinning against his skin as his other hand worked leisurely beneath the covers.

"You're a bitch," Mercutio grumbled, both eyes open now. He wet his lips. "I'm never letting you stay over again."

"Liar," Benvolio replied, and kissed him. "Remember? You _love_ me."

"That was said under duress," Mercutio grunted, shoving him so he could lay across him now and glare down with whatever righteous fury he could muster.

"It was not," Benvolio replied, looking up at him, "and you know it."

Mercutio bent his head and kissed him again, deep and slow and warm in the comfortable tangle of the bed and their two naked bodies. Benvolio sighed into it and shifted his hands to cup Mercutio's face. When Mercutio finally drew back to look down at him again, Benvolio could only smile, pink-cheeked and red-lipped and languid as a cat.

"I love you too, you know," he said, brushing the hair away from Mercutio's forehead.

"You better," Mercutio replied, "with everything I put up with from you."

"From _me_?" Benvolio laughed and rolled them over, bodies fitting together. "I'm nothing but easy-going."

Mercutio laughed. "Yes, the easy-going one who wrestles his cousin in a tomb and then screams at a bunch of authority figures until they end a feud." He ran his hands up and down Benvolio's sides.

"Hmmm," Benvolio replied, smiling, something almost like a purr as Mercutio rolled his hips against him. "Fair enough." He bent to nuzzle against Mercutio's shoulder. "They'll have to rename me. I'm not actually all that peaceful or good-willed."

"I think you're confused about something," Mercutio said, rolling his hips again and watching Benvolio's face as he did. "You think _benvolio_ means being passive, dutiful, quiet." 

Another roll and Benvolio groaned, dropping his head down to Mercutio's shoulder, hardly listening, half in a pleasurable daze. 

"You were none of those things last night but you actually, literally, made peace, you big dummy." He moved to kiss Benvolio's neck, chuckling to himself in a way that sent a rumble through Benvolio's body too. "And I do mean 'big' in every sense of the word, as I'm feeling against my hip right now, you--"

"Kiss me, you bastard," Benvolio growled, finding his lips again.

"I'll do more than that," Mercutio replied into his mouth, "and you're not gonna be quiet or passive about it either."

Then neither spoke in more than swear-words, groans, and monosyllables for about the next hour.

When they finally went quiet again, the bed sweatier and warmer and even more of a snarled mess than it had been previously, Benvolio tucked himself up against Mercutio's chest and sighed.

"Thank you," he murmured, and Mercutio laughed.

"Always good to get the recognition I deserve," Mercutio replied, and Benvolio smacked his side.

"Not for _that_ ," Benvolio grunted, smiling. "No, thank you for always… seeing me for myself, just as I am." He pressed a kiss to his chest, his own aching with something warm and blossoming. "Not just a Montague, not just Romeo's cousin, not just the caretaker or the straight man."

"Well, you're definitely not straight," Mercutio replied, and Benvolio nipped his chest in response.

"You know what I mean," Benvolio replied, smoothing the bit place with his cheek.

Mercutio laughed and shifted amongst the covers again and rested his cheek against Benvolio's head. "I do. And always, my friend." He rubbed against him again. "I fell in love with _you_ , everything that that means." 

"No duress this time?" Benvolio said, smiling.

"No duress this time," Mercutio repeated, running his hand over Benvolio's shoulder and back up, a soothing rhythm against his skin.

Benvolio smiled and shut his eyes, content to stay in bed the rest of the day. Everyone else, everything else, could wait this time.

Mercutio took a deep breath like he was about to speak and then just sighed, settling further into the bed. He was surprisingly quiet and still for long enough that Benvolio actually looked up at him. His face was pensive.

"What?" Benvolio asked.

Mercutio shook his head, meeting his eyes. "Do you think the feud will really end? Will last night have been enough?"

Benvolio readjusted in the bed so that he could prop his head on a hand, more level with Mercutio's face, and replied, "I really don't know." He chewed at his lip. "I hope so. We all need it to be done, to finally have some peace and safety. Even if the generation before can't totally let it go," he gave a soft smile, "I gotta believe our generation will."

Mercutio stroked a hand over his own bare chest, nodding a bit distantly. "What about Romeo and Juliet?"

"What about them?"

"Do you think they'll actually make it, in love and married after a couple days?" Mercutio asked, skepticism sneaking back into his voice.

"Dunno," Benvolio replied, resting further into his own hand as he considered. "I hope they do, though, for them and for all our sakes." He ran a hand through Mercutio’s hair. "What's this about?"

Mercutio shook his head, face clearing a bit. He met Benvolio's eyes again, mouth lifting into a grin. "What about Mercutio and Benvolio? I hear they're a pair of idiots."

"That's just the blonde one," Benvolio replied, smiling too and settling back against Mercutio's side. "Hot as hell but as out of control as a bag of cats." Mercutio laughed, and Benvolio continued, grinning against his chest. "I hear the tall one's pretty smart, keeps track of the blonde and makes the rational decisions."

"Nah," Mercutio replied, running a hand up and down Benvolio's back, "I think you've got it wrong. I hear the blonde one's hilarious and amazing and that the tall one's sexy but too dutiful, too focused on being good, kind of a stick in the mud."

Benvolio laughed now too. "So either we've got two competent and attractive men in a relationship, or two stupid disasters."

"Sounds about right," Mercutio replied, bending to kiss the top of his head. "So what do you think? They gonna make it, Merc and Ben?"

"You know," Benvolio replied, listening to the faint sounds of the city outside as he looked back up at Mercutio with a smile, "I kinda think they will."


End file.
